I found a little round cucumber lying on the ground and picked it, leaving the others to get a bit bigger. There were a few peas to pick, as well as some carrot thinnings. I would have thinned more of the purple carrots, but they are a very long variety, and our soil just doesn’t want to give them up!
I grabbed some of the smallest Red of Florence onions for today’s cooking, and decided to grab a few little turnips, too. There was one Magda squash I went ahead and grabbed. There was also a single green zucchini, and one large-ish sunburst squash, that I left to get a bit bigger.
The yellow bush beans are almost done. I couldn’t see very many developing pods left as I picked these. The purple Carminat beans are very prolific! There are so many more of them, compared to what’s on the green pole beans.
In that pile of green pole beans, however, there were two extras.
They are from this one little bush bean plant, grown from a leftover seed of our first planting of green bush beans under the sweet corn. The second planting of green bush beans are starting to develop pods, while this lonely original had a couple ready to pick.
I’m happy that this year, we at least have plenty of these two varieties of beans. The Red Noodle beans still show no signs of blooming, though they are at least starting to climb the trellis more. I’m curious about how the shelling beans will turn out, given how incredibly small and fragile the plants turned out to be. There are a lot of pods developing, too.
We planted so much this year, with hopes of having lots of food, in many varieties, to have over the winter. I always expect to have at least some losses. I didn’t expect to have so many total, or near total losses! Which makes me extra thankful to have what we do have.
It was still nice and cool when I headed out this morning. It’s been really humid lately, though, which means everything is completely soaked with dew.
Including…
… poor Ghost Baby!
I don’t know where her “nest” is, other than somewhere in the outer yard. Wherever it is, she clearly goes through a lot of tall – and wet! – grass to get to the kibble. She looked so miserable, too, and was hissing at me or any cat that came close.
Most of them were content to give her a wide berth.
Shortly after, I spotted Rosencrantz with the newest kitties under the shrine – which confirms for me that this is, indeed, her second litter. The mostly white ones were with her, but I spotted some movement and waited until the dark one came out. Unfortunately, with its siblings climbing right into the kibble bowl, he couldn’t get at the food! Then he saw me and ran off. So I got another scoop of kibble and spread little piles around the shrine platform.
Now that I have a better look at the dark kitten, I have to wonder. What would you call a cat with a pattern like that? Is this a tortoise shell? Do they normally have grey? There is orange on its face, but I can’t see orange anywhere else. Any ideas?
Later, I heard some distressed meowing and went to check. For a moment, I thought one of the white and grey kittens had got its foot caught in the rotten wood of the platform. It wasn’t, but I did see a third grey and white kitten, running away from the shrine and through the chain link fence! Which makes this a litter of five.
I also spotted the older grey and white kitten that looks so much like Junk Pile, but isn’t hers. It comes here alone, and I’ve yet to see it with any of the adults. I think I saw another older “stranger” coming through, but couldn’t be sure.
The main thing is that they are learning that the house is a safe and reliable place to get food and water. Come winter time, they’ll be more willing to discover and enjoy the heated cat house.
And winter is not that far off. September is just around the corner!
I’ve read they used to be common in our area. I have only ever see one, once before, when I was in my teens, and it wasn’t even here. It was at a mini golf course in a lakeside town about half an hour from here.
I have seen a lot more frogs – mostly wood frogs – this year, which always makes me happy. Seeing this handsome fellow is a real treat!
I wasn’t feeling very well this morning, so the girls took care of feeding the outside cats before heading to bed for the day. I didn’t start the rest of my morning rounds until late afternoon.
Tomorrow is expected to be a hot one, so I wanted to make sure the garden got a deep watering. I set up the soaker hose on the tomato bed and left it running while I did a dump run, then used the warm water in the rain barrel by the trellises and the Styrian pumpkins, to water everything at that end.
Part way through watering the trellises, I decided to set up one of the spray hoses I found while cleaning up around the junk pile. I set up the first one in the summer squash bed, then through the zucchini and some of the Teddy squash in the squash patch nearby. After hooking up the water and seeing that it was working out all right, I tried adding on the second spray hose, only to find it had a large crack near the connector. Well, at least I could get some of the squash watered while I continued using a watering can by the trellises. By that time that was finished, the spray hose had had enough time to do it’s job, and I could continue watering the rest with the hand sprayer.
I was quite pleased to see this fuzzy fellow.
One of the bird-seeded sunflowers by the carrots has at least 5 seed heads opening up, and there were several bumble bees buzzing around.
I love the bumbles!!!
The yellow pear tomatoes are finally starting to turn yellow!
I had some help by the chain link fence.
They were trying to pull out some of the crab grass that was growing through the netting. 😁
It’s about time to lift the net and to a thorough weeding under there.
There are quite a few nice, big (relatively speaking) Red Kuri squash developing here, and every couple of days or so, I’m finding new female flowers ready to be pollinated. I’m quite happy that we’ll have at least one type of winter squash to store for the winter!
Speaking of pollinating, while watering the corn and squash patch, I spotted our very first female Boston Marrow flower! I made sure it was pollinated and checked the other plants but, so far, they only have male flowers. I also spotted our first G-Star green pattypan squash, though it’s at the stage where it just dropped its flower. Over the next few days, I’ll be able to see if it got pollinated, or if it just falls off.
Still praying for a long, mild fall. So many things in the garden are suddenly starting to grow, bloom and produce fruit but, as of today, there’s only 3 weeks to our average first frost date.
I was surprised to have company while I was watering the grapes! Normally, she would have run away when I came this close. Instead, she just stayed all curled up and napping in the shade.
I got photos from my sister in law, yesterday. Their grapes are almost ready to harvest. Ours are still very small and green.
Hmm… I keep forgetting about that cross. I found it while uncovering the grapes from the spirea. I later learned my sister had put it there as a support for the grape vines. We should scrub off the rust, give it some sort of protective coat, and set it up somewhere permanent. I don’t know where it came from, but it would be a safe guess that my late brother salvaged it from one of this demolition jobs, like the stone cross by the spruces, for my parents. So I definitely want to hang on to it.
I topped up the kibble trays before going inside, including the one near the grape vine. Earlier, I’d seen the newest group of kittens playing around the shrine, so I made sure that container had plenty of kibble, too.
Pouring dry kibble into metal trays can be pretty loud. The sound is like ringing a lunch bell. By the time I was putting kibble in the last tray, I could see cats swooping in from all directions, heading for the kibble house! 😂 Unfortunately, the skunks have learned that sound means food, too! Ah, well.
Hopefully, I’ll be feeling good tomorrow morning. I want to get out while it’s still cool and continue putting wood chips around the saplings. I also plan to collect a harvest tomorrow morning, too. I’m just loving that we have so many fresh beans to harvest – the last batch did end up in the freezer, so we’re getting quite a few bags by now!
I went to check out some distressed sounding mews, and found Broccoli Baby in one of the elm trees by the sidewalk. She seemed to not like the “getting down” process.
I was able to walk past her on the sidewalk, and she just watched me from here, ready to run off in a moment. Which is progress!
I also caught sight of a couple of kittens in the big junk pile, with Rosencrantz nearby. I saw the white one with the mostly orange head, and behind it I clearly saw the kitten I’d only seen shadows of, earlier. Just it’s head, really. It looks like we have another tortie.
I am guessing that they are Rosencrantz’s second litter. We never did find out what happened with her first litter, but whatever it was, with everything still frozen, their chances for survival were low from the start. Now, she has four more, and they are looking strong and healthy. At their small size, and having them coming to the kibble tray under the shrine already, I’m hoping we’ll have better luck socializing them, than we’ve had with Broccoli Baby and the other older kittens!
While doing my evening rounds this morning, I spotted the first tassels on the kulli corn!
I got this picture by standing with my arms up as high as I could reach. I did not zoom in at all. I think at least a couple of the kulli corn have reached their 8′ potential height!
Still no signs of silks, though.
Going through the garden beds with one of my daughters later on, we were looking at the sweet corn, which has lots of tassels, and the popcorn. The little bitty Tom Thumb popcorn plants are not only showing lots of tassels, but I actually spotted some silks in one of them! The doubt the plant it was on was even a foot high. They only need 60 days to maturity, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, except for how drowned out they got this spring.
When checking the tomatoes in the main garden area, I was noticing some were looking like they were about to crack, and I think some were even missing. So we decided to harvest the most ripe ones. Yes, we’ve picked a few tomatoes here and there already, but this is our first real harvest of them!
The Cup of Moldova are on the right, Sophie’s Choice on the left. There are still plenty more on the vines that are completely green, or just starting to blush.
My daughter found a couple really ripe ones that were so small, they would have fallen through the holes in the containers we were using. Pocket tomatoes! 😄
Once inside, they got nestled into shredded paper. With so much less of the Sophie’s Choice tomatoes, they got transferred to a smaller bin.
They can now sit in the relative cool and indirect light of the old kitchen to finish ripening, safe from cats!
The girls will be prepping the kitchen and dining table for when we’re ready to start canning the tomatoes. Hopefully, they’ll find my small batch canning recipe book in the process. It’s bugging me, now that I can’t find it! I know where it should be, but it isn’t there!
We talked about pickling the beans I picked this morning, with the recipe from another book I found for that, but they might just blanch and freeze them, instead. It depends on how things go for them tonight. My older daughter has commissions to work on, of course, so most of that job will be falling on my younger daughter.
Today has been a very fruitful day out of the garden, and with so many setbacks this year, I am incredibly grateful.
Yesterday, I fixed up the mesh covered beds with the fall spinach, making sure to peg down the sides of the netting so the kittens couldn’t get under.
This morning…
Well… they didn’t get under it.
*sigh*
When I came out, there were kittens sitting on the mesh, looking at me.
I took this photo after I’d taken out all the pegs. The mesh needed more support, but I don’t have any more of the metal stakes I used to slide the hoops over.
What I did still have were some pieces from the canopy tent a piece of tree had fallen on last year. Most of the pieces from the dismantled frame are being used around various garden beds, but there were two longer pieces that had snapped near their middles that were still around, leaving me with four lengths with one rough end.
So I stuck them in the spaces between the hoops, broken ends into the soil, thinking maybe I could lash or zip tie hoops to them. Which wouldn’t be very stable, but as I pushed the pieces into the soil, I remembered that they all have screw holes at the ends. I’ve been using those holes to threat twine through.
So that’s what I did. After lashing the bamboo poles back across the hoops, I began stringing twine through and across the metal pieces, the hoops and the poles.
With kittens rolling around, playing in the netting, rolling across the bed, and generally getting underfoot.
I could see that some spinach from the first sowing had started to germinate, and the seedlings are all flattened.
*sigh*
Well, at least the netting has enough support to keep it from collapsing.
For now.
As I was cleaning up and about to put things away, something odd in the path caught my eye.
This was just sitting in the dirt in the path.
It wasn’t there yesterday.
It is not ours. The girls and I don’t have anything like this. Which means it is probably something that was left among my parents’ stuff, though I don’t recall ever seeing it before. Where it came from and how it got into the path of the old kitchen garden is a mystery!
I was able to do some harvesting this morning, while checking on the garden.
This is a beautiful Ozark Nest Egg gourd! From what I can see so far, we’ll have about 4 of them, plus there was a female flower I found that I hand pollinated.
I was able to hand pollinate quite a few summer squash, too. I did see bees out and about, but while the male flowers were open, the female flowers had already closed.
This tiny Baby Pam pumpkin is the most ripe of them all – plus there was another female flower that I could hand pollinate, too.
The smaller of the two giant pumpkins had a growth spurt. It also has developed a wonky shape!
I was very happy with this morning’s harvest
We are still getting yellow bush beans. The purple beans are getting very prolific, and the green pole beans are kicking in, too. (The green bush beans under the sweet corn are starting to show tiny pods, too.) We actually have enough beans that we could probably can some pin sized jars. I’d love to do some pickled beans!
Speaking of pickles, we even have enough cucumbers altogether to do some pickles, too – also in pint sized jars.
There are just a few peas ripe enough to pick, but more are growing. I thinned out more of the carrots, and grabbed a couple of small onions for today’s use. I found a whole three ground cherries that were ripe enough, they fell off their plants.
We also have our first picking of sunburst pattypan squash. I normally would not have picked them this small, but they don’t seem to be getting any bigger, before they start withering away. Hopefully, picking these will encourage more growth, and the hand pollinating I was able to do will help, too.
My daughters have been doing the processing at night, when things are cooler. They should be able to do the pickling, if we have all the ingredients we need. My recipe book for small batch canning seems to have disappeared, though, so I can’t double check to see if we are missing ingredients. I have other recipes, though, and of course we can look online.
I’m just excited to finally have quantities sufficient to even think of canning instead of freezing.
I had just put kibble out this morning, and was continuing my rounds when I saw something very unexpected.
New kittens had emerged from the junk pile!
There are actually 4 of them. I saw a dark shadow of a kitten behind the chain link fence.
This was the first one I saw, as I startled it and it ran away from the kibble tray under the shrine.
These two were eating voraciously. One ran off as I came closer, but the other – the one on the left – did not. I was able to reach out and pick it up! It took about half a minute before it realized something was weird and it started to hiss and wriggle. I managed to give it a few pets before gently putting it back with the food.
I think it’s safe to say that these two are Sad Face’s babies.
In the wee hours of the morning, I went in the bathroom and must have made a startling noise. Outside the window, I heard some scrambling, and the sound of a bin hitting the floor.
I found these guys.
There are three of them. They stayed frozen like this while I did some clean up. The bin did not spill, thankfully, and is now stored in the old kitchen.
I picked up just enough to make a clear path to the door. While I was working, one squeezed its way up to the next shelf and hid behind some stuff. The other two eventually pushed behind the bird seed bin to the corner by the window, and froze there.
I left the doors wide open and the lights on after I cleaned up as much as I needed to – with kittens under foot the whole time! The kittens and raccoons don’t seem to have any issues with each other. Hopefully, it will stay that way, and raccoons sometimes kill cats.
Considering how we have the doors rigged, I’m amazed that these big buggers managed to squeeze through. They’re set up so that, while a critter is pushing through the gap in one door, the other door gets pulled more closed. The gap is just big enough for a kitten. An adult cat would have to squeeze through.
A big, roly poly trash panda would have more problems getting in, to be sure, but get in they did!
They made no effort to get at the sunflower seeds in the other bin, though we do see them eating them where we put them for the birds. Hopefully, with the kibble bin no longer in the sun room, they will have no reason to come back.
The Re-Farmer 