Melancholy. Or Not.

This afternoon in the garden began with a bit of sadness, marking the end of summer and the return of shorter days and cold weather. I started my work by pulling out all of the zucchini and cucumbers. They were well past their prime and not producing anything. After I hauled the yellow and brown vines to the compost and took down the cucumber trellis, I turned my attention to the pole beans.

The pole beans have gone all "Little Shop of Horrors" lately. After a mostly beanless summer, the pole beans have taken over their trellis and two neighboring tomato cages, and have crossed the walkway to wind around the fence that surrounds the whole garden. So I grabbed a bucket and started picking beans. I filled a gallon bucket with more than two pounds of beans! I left a lot of little beans and saw a lot of flowers, so I guess there's still a little bit of summer left out there.

Foggy Morning

After several very hot weeks, big thunderstorms rolled through last night. Things cooled off a bit, and we woke up to fog this morning.

Garden Visitor

I stepped outside this evening to see if it had cooled down enough to open the windows. That's when I noticed that we had a visitor on top of the cucumber trellis. It's a red shouldered hawk. I've heard and seen it around the neighborhood--in years past, they've nested in a backyard a few houses up the street.

I'm just hoping this visitor will help take care of the chipmunks.

Lavender and Lilies

It's summer in the flower garden, too. My mailbox bed has daylilies as tall as the mailbox. Also in full bloom: milkweed, coneflower, lavender, and roses. One of my favorite things about gardening is watching the progression of blooms throughout the growing season.

My spring garden was all pinks and purples. In the summer, there's a lot more yellow and orange. Those bright colors seem to be a better match for the steamy summer heat.

Goodbye, Spring. Hello, Summer.

I harvested all of the potatoes yesterday. The grand total is just over 28 pounds! That's quite a yield from twenty little seed potatoes.

We picked the last of the peas today, too, and pulled up and composted the pea plants. The only thing left from the spring garden is lettuce, and it's having a hard time during the heat of the day. It may not last the weekend.

After I dug up the potatoes, I added a whole wheelbarrow load of gorgeous screened compost to that bed. Compost is magic. I use the three-bin system. By the time the third bin is done, it's really beautiful stuff to add to the garden soil.

In place of the potatoes, I planted cucumbers, basil, and dill. When I pulled up the garlic a few weeks ago, I planted zucchini and yellow squash. Add that to the peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes, and it's summer in the vegetable garden.

Harvest

I harvested my first potatoes this weekend. Sort of by accident. This is my first attempt at growing potatoes. So far I've learned that, like tomatoes, potatoes probably need to be staked or caged. I discovered this after a good rainstorm flattened several potato plants. Most of them are still doing fine, even though they're growing sideways, but a few stems broke and those plants are dying. I dug up one this weekend and found about a pound and a half of redskin potatoes. So now we're looking for potato recipes. I have about 20 plants--at 1-1/2 pounds per plants, that's a lot of potatoes in our future.

Carolina Wrens

Carolina wrens are nesting in an aloe plant on my front porch. I spent a lot of time this weekend sitting on the porch watching them bring food to the babies. The babies are getting big--I can hear them chirping when the parents approach. I think they'll fledge soon. One of the parents hopped all around the porch this afternoon, with a big bug in its mouth, chirping at the nest, as if encouraging the babies to come on out for a snack.

In other backyard bird news, the chickadees have fledged. Chickadees took over the bluebird box this spring. By the time we realized they were there, there was a nest full of babies, so we just let them be. This morning, a male bluebird was calling and investigating the nest. I cleaned out the old nest bits; I hope the bluebirds decide to stick around.