Our 2022 garden: some progress, and a little harvest

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It’s just past 10pm as I start this, and we’re still at 21C/70F, and the higher winds of earlier today have died down to a lovely calm. I found myself looking for reasons to get the fire going, but I really need to get some sleep tonight! Sleep has been frequently interrupted for the past while. 😕

Lack of sleep wiped me out enough that I was feeling quite ill this morning, to the girls took care of feeding the critters so I could try and get at least a couple of hours in. With Leyendecker still in recovery in my room (no, he wasn’t the one keeping me up at night!), and my daughters still having their days and nights reversed, my younger daughter has been taking her “night shift” and sleeping in my room, to keep and ear out on Leyendecker while I’m out. (He seems to be doing all right, though still having difficulties voiding, so we are monitoring him very closely) In the end, it was almost noon before I finally was able to head outside and do my rounds – minus the critter feeding.

Of course, a fair amount of that is spent checking things in the garden. Things like this.

Here we are, into September, and the Red Noodle beans are just starting to show flower buds!

This Kakai hulless squash was the first to develop and is looking like it’s ripe – but it’s about a quarter the size it should be. If the weather holds, there’s a chance we’ll have a couple more, larger ones. In fact, all the hulless pumpkins are going rather well, compared to the other winter squash. Only the Baby Pam pumpkins are managing as well. The Lady Godiva should give us at least 2 fully developed squash by the end of the growing season, with a few more little ones developing. Likewise, the Styrian variety has a couple large pumpkins that should be harvestable by the time growing season is done, with a couple more developing.

As for the Baby Pam, we have a little few bright orange pumpkins that could probably be harvested, that are smaller than they should be, but there are others that are still growing and turning colour that look like they will reach their full size – which isn’t very large to begin with.

This Georgia Candy Roaster is one of two stunted plants that were just covered in slug trails this morning!

While watering this evening, I was amazed to find female flowers among the Georgia Candy Roaster, and even one Winter Sweet. I hand pollinated them, just in case, but I think it was too late for one of the Georgia Candy Roasters.

While harvesting, I was surprised by how many Yellow Pear and Chocolate Cheery tomatoes were ready. I took the few G-Star patty pans that were on the plant killed off by a cut worm.

A few more of the Cup of Moldova tomatoes were ripe enough to pick, and into the freezer the went, with the others needing to be processed.

I keep saying I need to get those done, but the fact that they are in the freezer actually frees me up to work on other things. But that will be in my next post!

As for the garden, it’s a waiting game. So far, we’re not looking to have cold temperatures or frost for the rest of the month. With our first average frost date on Sept. 10, that is very encouraging. I plan to do recordings for another garden tour video on that date. Hopefully, thing weather will hold and things will have time to catch up.

I’d really like a chance to try those red noodle beans!

The Re-Farmer

Appreciation

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Today I found myself heading out to the city, and didn’t get to my computer this evening. My usual morning routine on the computer, such as uploading photos, checking the trail cam files and writing a blog post, got completely skipped.

Imagine my surprise when I had a moment to log on and discovered a big spike in visits and views! To those of you popping by from City Steading Brews, welcome! Another welcome to all those who found their way here to check out my posts about doing things crab apples. It’s definitely the season for it! I hope what you’re finding is useful.

Normally, I post at least one photo with my blog posts, but today I hadn’t taken a single photo! Which is very unusual for me. 😁

So, I instead went back a few days and put this together for you to enjoy.

It has nothing at all to do with anything I did today, but it’s cute kittens, so who cares?

They absolutely loved it while I was raking up that pile of grass clippings – and made it a real challenge to not accidentally rake up a kitten, too!

With things working out for my daughter being able to pay the vet bill for Leyendecker, we no longer needed to delay our city trip to continue stocking up. Today is Labour Day weekend, but a lot of places were open for at least short hours. I was not going to do Costco yet, but was going to try one of the other wholesale places I sometimes go to – only do discover it was closed! I still went to the international grocery store that I planned on, making a quick stop at a nearby Dollarama, then hit a Superstore. This time of year, a lot of places have case lot sales that I took advantage of. More stuff for the pantry, as we work on the assumption that we will have at least two months this winter, stuck at home due to weather conditions.

A couple of years back, a daughter and I would make these trips and do all the shopping in one day. Since then, we’ve added a couple more regular stores to shop at, and have split things up into two, sometimes three, trips. Thankfully, gas prices have been slowly going down. We’re currently at 165.9 cents per litre locally, though I did see one place in the city that was at 157.9 It’s still way too high, though. I put $40 of gas in my tank on the way to the city, and it gave me just over a quarter tank. I’m saving the fill for when I get to Costco, where the price will be better.

So, aside from stopping at the gas station, I went to three different stores, with two of them right next to each other.

It still left me totally drained. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I pace myself, whether or not I had an energy drink, or took a break for lunch. These trips just leave me exhausted. Being around so many people sucks the energy right out of me.

How on earth did I manage to keep going, when we were still living in the city? I was so involved in things, too. I now realize I must have been running on fumes for years. My mother often goes on about how we need to get out and around people more. Which makes sense coming from her. My mother spent some 40+ years here on the farm, raising 5 kids, growing a huge garden, and doing all the things that comes with running a “subsistence farm”, as it was called back then. Mind you, I do remember quite a lot of visits from their friends in the city, and attending social events, so it’s not like they were hermits. Still, once my mom moved to where she is living now, she had a lot more social opportunities right in her building, never mind the stuff in walking distance for her. My mother is a social person.

I’m not.

She, of course, thinks I should be. She especially brings it up when she wants me to drive her around all over the place, and/or stay at her place for hours, and I point out I have things to do at home. That’s when I get told how I need to be around people! I am allowed to take a holiday every now and then!

She has no idea just how people’d out I still am. I’ve tried to tell her about all the various things I was involved in before we moved here – things which often included a lot of conflict – but it’s completely beyond her experience, so she doesn’t quite get it.

These trips to the city remind me just how much I am NOT a city person, even after all those decades off the farm. I’m not a people person. It’s not that I don’t like people. I just don’t like being physically around lots of them for too long.

It makes me appreciate being where we are now, that much more. Even if it means dealing with our vandal, or getting snowed in repeatedly, or all the vehicle troubles, or living in a house that needs a top to bottom renovation (but I’ll be happy with just a new roof!), and struggling to keep the garden alive, or cleaning up the place with all the working equipment gone before we got here…

It’s still better than what we left behind. We have quiet. We have space. There is so much less stress. And I love the work that I’m able to do here, even if I have to resort to fairly primitive means to get things done.

There’s a reason I haven’t changed my tag line after being here for almost 5 years.

Sometimes, you really do need to go back, to go forward.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: dead plants, and a disappointing harvest

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I didn’t head out to do my morning rounds, other than feeding the cats outside, until after I got back from town with Leyendecker, so it was more afternoon rounds than morning!

There were a couple of pleasant firsts that I found in the garden.

This is our very first canteen gourd! Until now, there have been nothing by male flowers. I don’t think it actually got pollinated, but even if it did…. well, it’s September, so there’s no growing season left for it.

I wonder how these would have done, if we hadn’t had such a horrible spring? I wouldn’t mind trying them again. This year was so bonkers, I can’t use it to judge if we can actually manage to grow them here.

It’s the same with the luffa.

Male flowers have finally started to bloom!

Too late for these female flowers. They’re already done, and the developing luffa is going to just dry up and fall off.

There is hope for these ones, though.

Now that the clusters of male flowers are starting to open, there will be flowers available to pollinated these developing female flower buds.

Not that it matters too much. There isn’t enough growing season left. These were started so early indoors, because they need such a long time for the sponges to develop and dry out. They should have been blooming by July, not September!

Ah, well. Something else I wouldn’t mind trying again.

One of the disappointments of the day was found when I took a closer look at the one G-Star patty pan squash plant that was drooping.

It was drooping because the stem was severed! Looks like cut worm damage.

*sigh*

Of course, this happened with the one plant that had the most developing squash on it.

I did get an okay harvest, at least.

Those green beans are both pole beans and bush beans planted with the sweet corn.

What a pain those were! The grass clipping mulch will be great for the plants, but the grass stuck to the beans like crazy. Once they got into the colander, the grass clippings spread to all the other beans, too. Rinsing them off with a hose wasn’t enough. I ended up dumping the beans in a bucket of water, twice, before I could finally get the grass off. Even after swishing them in the water, every bean pod I pulled out ended up with grass floating on top of the water stuck to it, and I still had to hose them – and my hands – off to get rid of it. Who know grass clippings and bean pods would act like Velcro?

There were a few ripe Cup of Moldova tomatoes ready to pick. Those got cleaned off and went into the freezer with the rest.

Now that we’ve brought Leyendecker home from the vet, and I was able to use my daughter’s card to pay for it, we no longer have to delay our city stock up shopping. I still have the tomatoes taking up space in the freezer, though, and I just haven’t had time time to make the tomato paste; it needs to be tended pretty constantly for the hours it will take to get to the right thickness, and too much has been going on. I’ll probably have to split things into two trips, though, so I can make sure the first trip doesn’t have a lot of stuff for the freezer.

Later in the day, I was back out in the garden to see what I could get out of the Caribe potato bed.

This is an earlier variety, and they’ve looked ready to harvest for some time.

The potatoes never grew well, and quite a few never sprouted at all, due to all the flooding we had. I wasn’t expecting much.

The first thing to do was to pull back the straw mulch.

Oh, dear!

What you are seeing in the straw is a whole lot of slugs! I’ve never seen so many slugs all at once before. The whole bed was like this.

The next problem was trying to use the garden fork to dig around where I knew the potatoes had been planted.

We’ve used this bed once before, couple of years ago. I remember digging around in it. What I don’t remember is there being SO many rocks. It was almost impossible to get the fork into the ground, even with how much softer it was with the mulch. What I did manage to turn was full of healthy, active worms, at least, but there is no way we can grow in this spot again, as is. If we ever do, it will have a raised bed on it.

Not that it mattered, in the end. This is all the potatoes I found.

I planted more than I took out. Those two largest potatoes? They’re all chewed up by slugs. One of them is practically hollow.

I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s still disappointing.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the other two varieties will be much better. The Bridget are looking ready to harvest, too – what little there is. The All Blue are a late season variety, and some of them are still blooming, but…

*sigh*

With how successfully my mother was able to grow potatoes here, I had really hoped for better results. Yes, the flooding this spring did its damage, but it’s been a lot of years since anyone’s been picking rocks out of the garden. A lot of years with the frosts heaving more and more rocks to the surface. For it to be so rocky, I couldn’t get my garden fork to dig more than a couple of inches is just insane.

Potatoes are one of those staple crops we want to grow in large quantities for winter storage. Quantities that are more than what we could do in the raised beds we plan to build. With so many rocks in our soil, we still will need to build things up quite a bit to be able to have any crop worth mentioning.

It may be more efficient to get indeterminate varieties and grow in potato towers, instead.

The Re-Farmer

Have I mentioned I’m a suck for the cats?

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It was a gorgeous afternoon and evening yesterday. Not only a pleasant temperature, but even the mosquitoes weren’t as bad. I didn’t want to go back inside when I was done what I needed to do!

One of the things I did was re-do the shelf shelter for the cats. I noticed that the little kittens have been climbing all the way to the top shelf, which was actually use to store stuff, and have been snoozing in a corner, where I’d stacked some smaller pieces of rigid insulation.

The insulation over the bottom two shelves were getting ratty, so I decided to empty the whole thing, give it – and some of the insulation pieces – a hose-down and redo it.

Including making a next in the corner of the top shelf for the kittens, even though it meant not being able to fit everything back in again!

The sheets of insulation lining the bottom shelves were used again, since they fit the best and, aside from a few edges, still intact. When covering the fronts, I left the openings wider than before. When startled, the cats would dash out, catching on the edges of the insulation, sometimes hitting them hard enough to pull them right off the nails holding them to the shelf. I decided to try reducing the height of the openings. I want it open enough for them to easily get in and out, but small enough to let less of the weather in. Hopefully, they won’t get ripped right out by a startled cat!

As for the top shelf, I tucked a small pedestal plant stand in the corner and used it to support two levels with the rigid insulation for the kittens to lie on. There’s more space in front with an insulated floor, and there is insulation along the side and back walls, too. An extra piece across the front, and the kittens have their own little cubby hole to settle in.

Now I just need to clean up and redo the outside of the shelf. It had been wrapped in plastic to protect the wood from snow and rain, with an extended “roof” of rigid insulation, but the wind tore the plastic to shreds, and the cats have broken up the insulation. I’d like to find something sturdier to replace them with.

After I had emptied, swept and hosed down the inside, I had to give it time to dry before continuing, so I started another project.

A new cover for the rain barrel.

A couple of years ago, we made covers for the rain barrels out of window screen mesh and hula hoops. One for the barrel at the corner by the sun room, and the other for the barrel we fill with the host, at the far corner of the garden. The covers were partly to keep debris out, but also to make sure no critters fell into the barrels.

After a couple of years, however, the plastic hula hoops became brittle and started to crack. The cover for the garden barrel had been stored in the old garden shed for the winter, and it looks like something chewed holes in the mesh, too.

The sun room barrel’s cover is held in place with a board weighed down with bricks. When the barrel is getting full enough that more rain would cause it to overflow, the board and bricks hold the rain diverter in place.

Not long ago, I found the cover and its mesh broken up. Something had jumped onto it or something. The mesh had torn, but thankfully whatever did it, did not end up trapped in the water. Then we heard a commotion one night, and I came out to find the board and its weights, and the rain diverter, all knocked off the barrel, and the cover damaged even further. I put the board and its weights back, then found some pieces of rigid insulation to cover the rest of the barrel, with weights to hold them in place, to ensure no critter could access the water, until a new cover could be made. Even that ended up being pusher around a bit, as if some critter was trying to get at the water below – even though we have several bowls of fresh water critters can drink from. A new cover had to be made quickly.

Which is what I did while the shelf shelter was drying.

The materials used are much sturdier!

I considered using some chicken wire, but the openings are too large and the wire too easily broken. I went with some half inch hardware cloth I had, instead. The hoop is the same PEXX tubing I used to make arches to support netting over the old kitchen garden beds you can see in the background.

I used the barrel itself to measure the size needed to make the hoop, then cut a square of the hardware cloth to size, removing excess mesh from the corners to make it closer to “round”. The hardware cloth is a lot stiffer than chicken wire, but the extra strength is, I think, well worth it being such a pain to wrap around the hoop. Definitely glad for gardening gloves! The last step was to use a hammer on the underside to get the mesh right up against the hoop as tightly as I could.

There was, however, one problem.

The top of the barrel is not round. It’s more of an oval shape, and a wonky oval at that. The old hula hoop I’d used before was quite a bit larger than the top of the barrel, so it didn’t matter, but this hoop was cut for a more snug fit. The less sticking out, the less likely a critter will knock it off, even with the weights. I thought I’d still made it large enough to fit over, but the barrel’s shape was just too wonky.

I ended up tying some paracord around it as tight as I could, then used a metal tent peg to twist the cord even tigher.

Yeah. That bend up piece of metal was a tent peg.

Between the paracord pulling the top of the barrel into a more round shape, and the hammering of the hardware cloth tight against the hoop, I was finally able to get it in place. The board and weights were added to support the diverter when we need it, and the extra brick at the back, just in case something knocks the board off again, so the whole thing doesn’t flip off.

I might still add window screen mesh to this, since things like small frogs or insects, as well as small debris, can get through the half inch mesh. As it is right now, a cat – or even a racoon – could jump onto the cover and it’ll hold their weight without issue. The PEXX tubing will also last a lot longer, too.

All in all, I think it worked out rather well for using stuff I got for other projects! 😁 It didn’t even take that long to do. It took long enough for the washed out shelf to dry, at least.

So we now have a shelf shelter for the cats all cleaned out and ready for winter – on the inside, at least – and a cat and other critter proof cover for the rain barrel.

Ah, the things I do for the kitties!

The Re-Farmer

Full Leyendecker update

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The handsome boy has not cooperated with getting his picture taken, so you’ll just have to do with these two!

Is that adorable or what? 💖

We got a call from the vet fairly early in the day, and we were told we could come get him any time. They had kept him overnight again because they had seen a very small amount of blood in his urine bag before removing the catheter, but during the night, without the catheter, he’d had a large and normal pee, so he was good to go home.

He is now on three medications, including a pain killer and a smooth muscle relaxant. The general consensus is that he’s basically stressed out with so many cats in the house. We talked about focusing on adopting him out after he’s done his meds, etc. He will be on one of those meds, in decreasing amounts, for 30 days in total. They started him on it at the clinic, so this evening’s dose was his third day on it. We also got a bag of special diet dry cat food and several cans of wet cat food. If he is on it long term, we can switch to a cheaper branch, but can’t mix brands – so no dry cat food in one brand, and wet cat food in another. For now, he stays on the special food while he is on his medications. One of the things the vet noted is what with fixed males, they tend to get blocked more often in the spring and in the fall, so those are times when we will have to keep an extra eye on him.

The staff apparently all fell in love wit him. He was extremely chill and friendly, and did not act at all like he was sick. “He doesn’t know he’s blocked” was how the vet put it. Which does make it more challenging to keep an eye on him! They want him back in a couple of weeks for new bloodwork to check on his kidneys, because of his off-the-charts high potassium levels they found when they first tested him.

So we need to keep a close eye on him, and that means keeping him in my bedroom/office, and he is not at all happy about that. There is no way we can keep him on different food without isolating him, either. However, since he wants out, keeping him isolated is adding to his stress, which isn’t going to help his recovery any!

Nosencrantz and Butterscotch, meanwhile, are not happy with him being here, either, so that’s not going to help their stress levels any. He, on the other hand, it content to ignore them.

He used the litter box shortly after we got home, which was a good sign. After we gave him his evening meds, though, he went to the litter box, used it a bit, then went to the closet and tried to pee there, then went over by the water bowl and tried to pee there! He started yowling again, too. Hopefully, once the muscle relaxants and pain killer kick in, he’ll be able to use the litter box again without trouble. It will be a while before the discomfort ends.

As I write this, he is on my bed, chilling.

Hopefully, it will be a quiet night tonight. We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

Quick Layendecker update

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The boy is home!

He did very well overnight, without the catheter. The way the vet put it, he didn’t know he was blocked. His behaviour was totally normal.

Which means the entire staff fell in love with him. 😁

They also called him a miracle cat, because his potassium levels were so high, it could have killed him. I suspect his large size helped with that.

He is isolated in my bedroom with Butterscotch and Nosencrantz for now, and one of my daughters is spending the “night” with him. Which means I don’t have access to my office for now. I will do a proper update, this evening.

We are so happy he did so well!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: little vegetables, deer damage, more mulching – and Leyendecker update

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My daughters were finally able to finish raking up grass clippings from a couple days ago and bring them to the squash and corn patch for me. My older daughter still isn’t feeling very well, but she is much improved, at least, and can be more active again.

While they did that, I did my morning rounds and checked on things. My first find was a disappointment.

The deer chomped this highbush cranberry. Again! It had been recovering so well from the last time they beheaded it. The other cranberry was ignored. The silver buffalo berry and sea buckthorn are being left alone. I don’t know why they keep going after this one.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in the garden this morning. I was awakened by a crashing, early this morning, and discovered Nosencrantz had tried to get at the window again. I’ve actually had to put other screens in front of the window to protect it, because as much as I don’t mind them sitting on the window sill, I DO mind them clawing at the screen and making holes. When I had the window fan set up, they kept trying to jump on top of it and knocking it off, so they could claim the space. I took a couple of the old window screens I found in the shed and barn that we’ve been using for various things. They’re different sizes, so it took two of them to fully cover my window. They’ve got cord running across to hold them in place, but I still need to be able to slide them aside to reach the window. Which means that, if she’s determined enough. Nosencrantz can knock the screens off entirely.

Which is what woke me up.

As I was putting the screen back up, I heard the furnace shut off.

I hadn’t even noticed the furnace was on. Why did the furnace turn on???

Well, it turns out that, instead of the overnight low of 11C/52F that was forecast, the actual temperature at the time was 5C/41F. The girls had their windows open – it was finally bearable up there for them! – but with the way air circulated in this house, that resulted in a cold wind blowing down the stairs.

I have since turned the thermostat down further.

This is where looking at the long range forecast frustrates me. According to those, we weren’t supposed to have overnight lows like that until the end of September. Our average first frost date is Sept. 10, which is Friday. Over the next while, we’re supposed to go up to 28C/82F with a low of 15C/59F on Thursday, then drop to 16C/61F with a low of 4C/36F on Friday, then warm back up again.

Which would be okay, if that actually happened, but if our overnight low was less than half of what was forecast, how can I trust we won’t get frost temperatures?

Well, we can just hope.

The baby eggplant is getting bigger, but looked like it was about to break off its stem, so I dug out the last of the tomato cages I bought this spring and set it up.

Remarkably, there are tiny little peppers forming! They are supposed to turn purple when fully ripe, but I doubt there is enough growing season left for that.

Oh, I forgot to mention. My daughters taste tested the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, and just loved them. They are very flavourful. The red tomatoes are very mild flavoured. The yellow pear have more flavour, but not compared to the other cherry and grape tomatoes we grew last year. So we won’t grow the yellow pear tomatoes again, but will be saving seed from the Chocolate Cherry. We got the seeds from Veseys, but they don’t seem to carry them anymore. From what I can find, though, they are an open pollinated, heirloom variety, so saving the seeds should give us the same variety. I did find some sites listing them as a hybrid, though, so perhaps there are more varieties with the same name. No matter. We will give it a try!

The girls got a nice big pile of grass clippings gathered for me. This is just from the south yards, which I cut a couple of days ago, so the clippings had time to dry in the sun a bit.

It was enough to finish mulching either side of the sweet corn, around the green bush beans, and most of the space between the corn. I did have to rake up more grass clippings from the north yard where I mowed yesterday to finish the job. The grass in the west yard is so sparse, there are no clippings worth raking up.

At this point, the amending that’s being done here is more for next year. We will be moving the trellises closer to the house next year, and these might be good places to put them. I don’t know when I’ll be able to start taking down trees to build more high raised beds – there are only 2 that are unobstructed and can be taking down at any time. Others need to wait until the garden beds in the east yard are done, and those ones need to be cleared before yet others can be cut down.

So even if things just don’t work out and we’re not able to build any high raised beds this fall, we can still use the new beds we made for the potatoes and melons, and in this corn and squash bed, to build tunnel trellises – I’d want to build two, I think – and more basic trellises with other materials we have available. I think these might even be permanent or semi-permanent locations for trellises, so we can make the extra effort to ensure they are not wonky and wobbly, like the ones we’re using for one last year right now. Which means the more mulching and other amending we do this year, the better it will be for next year.

I’ve also been looking at the grape vines. I want to transplant them to a better location, and would love to build an arbour style trellis for them. It would be nice to make an arched style arbor over the people gate in the chain link fence, but not with those big elms above. Those are not as high on the priority list, though, so we have time to figure out what we want and where.

I’ve been eye balling some of the wood the tree guys set aside for me when they chipped our branch piles. We might be able to use some of them to make smaller, slightly raised beds in the old kitchen garden. Or even just a low wall along one side, to keep people from accidentally stepping where my daughter has planted her irises and daffodils! 😁

I’m quite looking forward to figuring things out.

Meanwhile…

I just called the vet clinic again, which saved them from needing to call us later on. Leyendecker is eating, which is a good sign. They plan to take the catheter out this afternoon, and will monitor him overnight to make sure he’s peeing properly without it. We will get a call tomorrow. I asked about the bill, as my daughter will most likely transfer funds to me – my debit card has a higher purchase limit than hers does – and I wanted to give her an idea of how much. So far, we’re at about $700. With the medications he’ll be coming home with, and tonight’s overnight stay, she said the total might reach a thousand. Of course, he will need to come back for blood work to check if there is permanent damage to his kidneys. At least with that, we have the list on the form I signed, so I know that after taxes, that’ll be another $150 or so.

The main thing is, he is recovering, eating and drinking, and should soon be coming home!

The Re-Farmer

Mutants!

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I just got back from meeting someone who, unlike us, has lots of squash this year and was willing to share…

… her mutants!

She didn’t even plant them. They came up on their own!

Two of them are a type of zucchini, in their winter squash stage. The other stripy ones are squash and pumpkins that cross pollinated. Yes, I know pumpkins are a type of squash, but they get their own category. 😁 I was told that 2 of them that have the darkest green are ready to eat now.

I was also gifted a big bag of spinach and beet greens! Our beets are doing so poorly this year, the greens were unusable, and our fall spinach are still trying to come up.

It should be interesting to see how these taste!

Now… how would one prepare a mutant squash? She said to just use them like pumpkins. So…

… pie?

The Re-Farmer

Morning babies… including a green baby!

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Going out in the mornings is such fun these days! There are so many babies to see.

Granted, most of them are not as willingly photogenic as this little model of mine!

What a cutie!

These ones are willing to pause for pictures, as long as I don’t get too close!

I’m not sure where the tortie was hiding.

The love to play in the holes in the shrine’s base.

As these little guys aren’t up to going to the kibble house, yet, I brought over a bowl for water as well as kibble. Now that they are eating solid food regularly, I figured Rosencrantz could do with less kitties still nursing because they are thirsty.

While working in the garden, I spotted an adorable little green baby on a corn leaf.

Can it be any cuter? 💚🐸

It was about as big around as a quarter.

My daughters have been getting tree frogs visiting their window for most of the summer. The same three frogs, in small, medium and large! 😄 This one falls under the “small” category.

I love tree frogs. They are so adorable!

The Re-Farmer