Blog
July 7, 2009
The rain has continued to fall, but it's also starting to heat up. Squash, corn, peppers, tomatoes and green beans are happy, but some of my small butterfly plants have taken a beating from the heavy rain. Baby birds have flown from the nests, but the bluebird has yet another batch almost ready to hatch.
A hungry purple martin baby
This week I made grilled chicken and garden vegetables. I always leave the skins on my mashed potatoes.
The "commodity breakfast" raffle basket I won at the Mihesuah family reunion. I plan to make a separate page on this site that focuses on "Cooking with Commods."
I pulled up the last onions of the season yesterday. I plan to chop up and freeze half of them (for stews and soups) and store the rest in the crisper. We go through onions pretty fast so they won't last long.
After the summer heats up I can count on my various pond plants to become overgrown. The frogs and fish love it.
My first green beans of the season. These are grown in pots.
Spot the big and little frogs.
One of our winter frogs that has fattened up since moving outside. There are plenty of mosquito larvae, crickets and various other insects to eat.
The tomoatoes I grew from seeds in my basement are doing very well. So far I have found only two tomato worms (I fed them to the catfish).
This tomato in the topsy turvey thing is growing fast, but it requires a lot of water.
My mother gave me three orange tree sprouts. The tree she keeps in her house produces dozens of small oranges. These require much sun.
Hungry swallow babies in the nest under the porch.
A couple of hiding frogs
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Hen and chicks
A couple of rain barrels I bought from gardeners.com. During a rain they fill in seconds. I had the gutter guy create a double spout. These barrels have lids with screened holes to allow water in (and keep mosquitoes out) and hoses at the bottom.
Profile of Draco the bearded dragon.
I call these two shots above "the awakening."
A lone grass stalk made its way out of a bag of soil.