Pumpkins for friends and family

Another frost warning initiated harvest of the afterthought pumpkin patch. We are not expert pumpkin growers and are very lucky to harvest any pumpkins. These were pumpkins that grew on plants from seeds planted relatively late in our growing season and only sprayed intermittently to control beetles. Mildew also attacked the plants later in the season, killing some of vines. We planted several cultivars...and ended up with a few very nice pumpkins. There are just enough to give to friends and family! Yeah!

Sunflower harvest

It's harvest time.  All the big headed volunteer sunflowers have grown out of the pretty  stage and are ready for harvest.  Last year I let the birds have them all.  This year I am again going to try to harvest and save seeds.  I am curious whether the seeds from these short guys will make short plants again next year.  I had one mammoth grey stripe volunteer--these two Teddy Bear, and all the rest were the little black sunflowers.  

Will I be successful is saving seeds, will they be viable, and will I remember why I saved the seeds or will I be into yet another phase of my life?  

This has been a great gardening summer--thanks to all you garden bloggers providing wonderful motivation.

Me, Myself, and I

Gosh..I can't believe it has been almost a month since I have posted anything.  It has been a buy time.  The "grand old lady" farmhouse on our farm is empty and we are cleaning and getting ready for new tenants.  She is such a beautiful old house overlooking the bottoms.  She is over 150 years old and has a civil war tree planted in the yard.  She was not always in Mark's family...but almost.

Me, myself, and I with a little bit of help from the rest of the family has been market gardening, cleaning, and just generally enjoying summer.  I can't wait for the new tenants to move in.  I pulled weeds in the neglected  front flower bed and planted Cosmos.  Their lacy leaves are so pretty.  Maybe they will be flowering when the tenants actually move in.  I hope so.

marvelous misty morning monkeyshines

I had a marvelous walk with the dogs this morning.  It was soft and misty and the dogs had a great time running in the water, sniffing, and chasing sticks.  Last summer I was running past these ponds every day and I was amazed how far it was.  I love the water and I needed the rejuvenating.  It was absolutely great.  Besides other pictures I took this one of the teasel.  It is looking marvelous in my part of the world right now.  Don't you love the perfect purple circles of blossom around the centers of the burr?

Summer sunflower

Look what I found in the garden this morning.  I had noticed that my Teddy Bear volunteer sunflowers were blooming, but I hadn't noticed the tall guy was showing his face too.  Or maybe it's a she.  Sunflowers are so cool.  I am thinking about ordering some seed for cut sunflowers.  The little orange ones are fast growing and are so pretty.

There is a little chance for rain in the forecast today.  I am hoping for a good soaking so my latest bean seedings will get a good soaking.  The most watched tomato is turning pink and we've had a couple messes of green beans.  There is a zucchini or two coming, and I've had a few cucumber sandwiches.  These cucurbits are still looking healthy, with no nasty beetles showing up yet.  Maybe my camouflage scheme is working.

I'm finally getting the hang of the camera phone.  Hopefully better photos will start appearing.

Chicken tragedy

We had a major chicken tragedy. Of the 7 hens and 1 little rooster we had, we are down to 2 hens. This happened in two nights. The culprits were a couple of raccoons...so a word to the wise...check the integrity of the pen you keep your chickens in. Raccoons are houdini's and can wipe you out in one evening.

This is not the first time this has happened to us. We had a duck tragedy several years ago, except that happened in one night. Poor ducks. Poor chickens. Bad raccoons.

Go on over to this link for an interesting post about urban raccoons. http://torontoist.com/2006/10/raccoon_rage.phpo

Peas still blooming.

My last pea planting is just now coming in.  The major part of this planting was sugar snap peas.  If I were to do it over again, I would have planted more sugar snaps a few weeks earlier.  They are producing well, but I think market demand for them was a little bit better a few weeks ago.

I've made a technological breakthrough though.  This photo was taken with my new cell phone.  I had a camera on my old one, but not as good.  This is just a few megapixels more than my actual camera, but the camera has bluetooth, and I have bluetooth on my work computer.  Today I learned how to get camera pictures on my computer using the bluetooth capability.  Yeah.