A zuke, a cuke, and a pepper

And a few tiny tomatoes, some peas and some raspberries. :) and herbs. And my geraniums and rue and beans are all thriving. I couldn't quite summon the strength to weed as well as water, but that can be tomorrows adventure. Now, I must go home and cook!



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First cuke and pepper!

All kinds of things on the verge of harvest now. Yay!!











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Mad dogs and Englishmen

And me. All out in the noonday sun. In my case, to do a little garden work, but I plead temporary insanity. Gardening at that hour on a 90+F day? Yeah. At least I had the sense to stick my head under the water spigot each time I filled the 5-gallon bucket for watering. Still, got a fair amount done, and glad to see a few tomatoes and peppers showing through. Also, looks as though I'll get a nicely staggered crop, so I hopefully won't get overwhelmed. Tied up and staked up sone of the mint, since it's blooming. I was going to trim it back, but there were so many bees having a field day on the little blossoms that I relented and just tied them back so they'd grow up instead of out.





Honestly it does still resemble a jungle but since the bees are happily pollinating and hopping from the tomato and pepper blossoms to the mint and back, how can I complain?

Other areas of the garden are looking better, or at least more orderly.






Peppers, tomatoes, purple cabbage, and a couple random volunteer potatoes from last year? Hmm. Well they are all blooming with health so...



That last photo doesn't seem to show how much I've tied that monstrosity back, but I have. Really.

Also, I am inordinately fond of borage's pink and blue flowers. I seem to choose an awful lot if plants that like to sprawl, so after this photo I gave it a bamboo stake to lean on.



Then, on the way home for a shower, I stopped in to browse at my local farm/store/greenhouse. I'd never seen inside their greenhouse, but it's small and cute - but also it has fish!! I will have to stop by another day to visit them. They're lovely fat healthy Koi.



So, more work to do in the garden, but enough for one day. In spite of heat&sun induced headaches, it was a good day off.

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Ahhh, much better

Tucked in the wormwood and some more creeping thyme; planted some more beans, and gave everyone a good soak.





The bats swooped by to say hello as they munched on more bugs. :)


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Bats!

There are bats at the garden eating bugs!!!

*does a happy dance*

Also blackberries, raspberries, and at last my tomatoes are showing fruit.

Whew!

Now to come back tomorrow and finish clearing out all the overgrowth from around the edges of the garden.


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I'm sorry, the temperature is what?

Well, my poor garden (and everyone else's, here in New England) is struggling with the heat. At least my peppers might like it, but apparently it's not my imagination - we've broken the 100 degree mark, but mostly it's stubbornly sticking around between 94 and 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Good times.

Pardon me, but now I have to go water my garden, while it won't *immediately* evaporate away and might actually benefit the little green babies.

Rue, geraniums, and thyme

Okay, and the usual gang of mosquitoes too.

Still, I'm pleased with the progress so far. The main round of planting, both starters and seeds, are safely tucked into their beds beneath various ghostly (ghastly?) protective layers of wire cage material and row cover or plain plastic screening.



I'm slowly digging out the mint that's in the way and freeing up the other beds. Today was just about watering in the new seeds, using the small grass-clippers to nip down some of the grass taking over the walkway between me and the nearest water spigots, and to plant a few geraniums (one rose-scented, one "Pinto Red" that's in flower now), a rue plant (I'm fond of it; I blame my mother for that! ) and some creeping thyme.




Plus, by planting the new ones, I've thoroughly inconvenienced the local chipmunks. Always a good thing to keep them on their toes. ;)

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I regret to report that Eucalyptus oil

...is not that effective when there are that many clouds of mosquitoes. I managed to get the door part of the gate nailed together, at least, but not a whole lot else done. It was pretty brutal. I may try to switch to an early morning routine - not sure how much of this I can stand, given the bites I've endured every time I'm out there. Apparently part of the reason the bugs are so numerous is that we've had a lot of rain (therefore more standing water and larger vernal pools as breeding grounds) but also we're still suffering from a significantly reduced brown bat population due to the White Nose Fungus syndrome. June and July are the season when mothers have their little ones, so they tend to stay close to their roost while they're nursing the little ones, but the males usually have several roosts. If you've decided to install a bat house in your yard this year, don't get discouraged if you don't think they're taking up residence; apparently the females are more choosy than the males (pups to rear) and the males flit around a bit. Keep it up through at least a year so they get a chance to get used to it's presence. It took a couple years before my aunt & uncle's bat house got settled, but now they have regular resident bats there.

That's all for tonight. See you around the gardens!


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Mending the fence

Got a fair amount of maintenance done tonight at the plot. Attacked the bittersweet that's been colonizing the fenceline, yanked out a lot of mystery tubers that grow 3' tall (hmph. If only my veggies would be so vigorous right?!) and mowed somed of the grass coming up in the walkways. I cleared out one of the smaller beds and that'll be my flower garden - it's already got columbine growing there so that's a good omen for the kinds of flowers I'm fond of. Then finally I tackled nailing up the chickenwire (and what's with the sudden enthusiasm for calling it "poultry fencing"?!) to complete the rest of the back fence. My neighbors in that direction look as though they've given up, which would be too bad, since they're awfully nice, but given that they have a new baby, I can only imagine: probably something had to give, time-wise. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I see them return though. Lots of other people (including the new gardeners working overtime to put up their fences while sorting out their soil, laying mulch, prepping beds, etc) are really doing well this year. It's fun to walk through and admire everyones different gardens and little spaces to sit and enjoy their garden. I'm personally slightly envious of those who have arbors set up - I'm hoping to get one set up for myself later in the summer, but obviously a lot of other things could get in the way of that getting built.

The little plants starters I laid in this weekend are looking alright, and in addition to the cage, I laid some of that white cloth over them to keep the bugs and other critters off. It makes it a little less cheery to look at, but I'm hoping it'll increase my chances of getting a yield from my various little plants. I forget what that stuff is called, but I'd saved it from last season, and I find that exclusion methods seem to work best for me. Too bad I can't set up an entire enclosure of that stuff: it would be nice to avoid the mob of mosquitoes, but they really like me this season. Oddly enough, I've been reading this book about color, pigments and dyes in art history, and it mentioned that one of the very non-mysterious reasons ancient peoples tended to paint themselves with ochre is that it tends to protect one from insects. Not so dumb, huh! Granted, I have no idea where to obtain some of that rock, and even were it easily obtainable in the raw form you still wouldn't catch me painting myself up with it to go gardening. On the other hand, given how covered in dirt I come OUT of the garden due to all my swatting at the pests with my dirt-covered gloves, maybe it's all the same?!

So next visit should include the new gate, some mint-mulching (works so far), some seed planting, and a little more digging. That's the news from plot 78B - keep digging and drop by if you're in the neighborhood.

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So many birds,

...and I wish they'd eat more mosquitoes, but who's complaining? Okay, it's true. Now that my arms and neck are devastated by the clouds of mozzies that assaulted me at sunset, it's true, I'm complaining. A little.

On the other hand, I really enjoy the sheer number and variety of birds that I see and/or hear at the allotment when I stop to rest a moment.

For your amusement, and from the safety of your computer terminal so that you don't have to brave the mozzies...a list of the ones that I know about. There are others that I'm still identifying by call and by plumage, but since I can link to a photo and recording of their call (Thank you Cornell Ornithology lab):

The usual suspects:
Blue Jays
Robins
catbirds
barn swallows
tree swallows
sparrows of various kinds
crows
starlings

More often heard than seen:
red-winged blackbird
pheasant
mourning dove
mockingbird
yellow throat warbler
yellow throat vireo

More often seen than heard:
Brown-headed Cowbird
red-tailed hawk
grackles
Baltimore Oriole