Baby blossoms and fruit

It's no accident that babies are so precious.  When I step on the trailing tendril of a watermelon arm, I gasp, "oh, I'm so sorry!"  Watermelon leaves are the prettiest: they have long spotted fingers that match their fruit skins, how very clever.  And tiny pale yellow flowers - no hint of the giant fruit they are crafting inside!

Honeybee is making this cucumber very, very happy right now.  You can tell the honeybees by their honey-colored stripes and their soft buzz.  Wasps and other scary insects have much more aggressive brrrrrr sounds.

 I think it is obvious that God made baby animals and baby plants precious on purpose.  I cringe when I read seed-pack instructions to "thin".  What!?  You want me to destroy the babies?!  I ignore the instructions and give each seed its space.  It is in my guts to protect the babies, I lift them up and set dry straw underneath.  They are little treasures.

The cantaloupe's are winning for largest fruit so far - see the striped ball?  It's pretending to be a watermelon.  It better not be a waterloupe - I am wary of cross-pollinating.

Baby Winter Squash - this plant is a gift from grandma - it says "bonbon" on its tag,  Hmmm, a cross between bonbons and giant squash?!  How can that be? Intriguing.

I planted more zuchinni this year than ever in my life (well, that's true for every plant in the garden - this is biggest-ever gardening).  My childhood memories of zuchinni are four.  First, I hated them, yuck, gross, sliced and stewed with tomatoes and onion, blech.  Second, my sweet Grandma Lucille called them zuchskeeny (sound it out and chuckle like we did) and I adored her.  Third, they were very poky plants that scratched my arms and grew shockingly fast.  Fourth, my charming little brother could take a wagon-full down the block and return from his door-to-door with a winsome grin and empty wagon.  Now I am a grown up and I know the truth: zuchinni are more delicious than butter.  Coincidentally, they are quite tasty IN butter.

These baby zuchinni made me jump for joy.

Last year I learned that there are boy and girl blossoms - they are different!  They are also perfect giant blossoms to dissect for a botany lesson, we did that.  Bitty purple green bean blooms would be no good for dissection.

Today I watered each happy mound: zuchinni, spaghetti squash, cantaloupe, winter squash, blonde cucumber, pickling cucumber, watermelon.  I should count how many, I bet there are 40 mounds.  See three of the lacy watermelon mounds there behind my dirty dog Jenny.  She romped (like a lunatic racing back and forth - she is child-like in her obsession with splashing mud) in the trickle of a creek while I talked to the honeybees.

Goodness of hard work

My heart is full.  We spent today doing lovely together-things.  Like everyone putting away laundry!  And Isaac declaring, "I think the toilet is the most interesting thing in the bathroom to clean".  We uncovered our floors, need only to mop them (haha, as Ruby says, "that's for, like, every 3 months or something, right Mom?" Yes, but don't tell people that.) and then we dove into preparation for a great chicken day.  But that's for another day's telling.  The point is, my heart is full of the goodness of hard work beside the people I love.  

Putting the roof on our new woodshed.

I'm so proud of my husband.  He's the kind of man who works all day, drives down our driveway and almost before we realize he's arrived, he's changed into work boots (and a sleeves-cut-off t-shirt) and he's outside working.  So far this spring he's built an enormous woodshed (2 rooms, one for old wood, one for green), cut our giant sycamore tree completely into firewood, created a ginormous garden with 300 linear feet of deer fence (and way too many hand-dug post holes - evil clay), plowed and planted it (with help from his family crew!) - and this doesn't even count all the animal work he's done.  That's for another blog post.  I'm really proud of him.

Just after dropping the giant (dying) sycamore tree so we can start our new garden.

Playing in the tree - next morning I took the kids to the beach, he had the whole tree cut and stacked before we returned.

See where the tree stump is by the dog house?  The kids are relocating our fire pit and you can see the frame on the right of the pastured-poultry pen he built with the neighbor for the 30 broiler chickens we had in the barn.

Plowed and double-axle load of topsoil delivered.

I sawed these lattice boards and nailed them myself!!  Lettuces, dill, sweet peas and 2 cherry tomatoes inside.  These little boxes are for munching.  My goal with the lattice: peas that climb and protection from the chickens.

Sometimes the workers take a little break.

This is Anna in the tomato patch - we planted more than 50 tomato plants.  She's giving Jenny (the dog) an early morning garden tour.  We hoped dog-smell would make the deer afraid to taste our little green miracles until Daddy got the fence up.  Up there you see Jenny surveying a row of baby lima beans.

Ruby in His glory

This is Ruby.

See me? See me! Aren't I lovely?

Yep, she knows she's a princess. One of her Daddies is the King!

Her boa isn't hot pink feathers - nope - the Master made these feathery things.

Don't they look beautiful on her! She was designed to be delighted in!

Peaches

Did you know that peaches don't grow sweeter, only softer, after you pick them? They need their tree to get sweeter.

Ruby and Pete both have photo credits on this post - can you guess which is whose?

My Garden

I did it! I took photos of my plants - each year I puzzle over what goes where and how and when. This year I planted some duds and some glorious ones! I will remember!

In the front yard:This flower bed was my Mother's Day gift from Forrest and Earlene. I remember digging out the gravel and dumping in the dirt, arranging the border rocks and the beginning of rain that sent them off in the old pick-up. They labor their love for us - we feel it strongly!! I love the dark pink Cosmos - seeds did NOT take (only one survivor), but the flat worked. I love the Cleome - in white here (and pink in back-yard bed). Layered perfectly with Cosmos and Purple Salvia perennial on outsides and Cleome in middle. Buttercups are just red foliage now - they'll all travel to the driveway hillside next spring to do their perfect buttery blooming. Russian Sage looked cool a couple weeks ago with the bright purple onion blooms - I've started cutting them off since they are all seed now. Next spring will have to take the bulb pictures - they are a wild crew of bloomers - I rearranged a bit after they were tired early this summer, I hope they survived.

First veggies are trying to grow along the new deck-length beds. A few snapdragons and only-leafy yellow daylillies (can't see) frame the front rock-steps. Health-kick (2) and Colonial make 3 tomato plants tied to the railing. Then pole beans and one surviving Cardinal Climber vining Crocosima which will eventually bloom all over. The zinnias and sunflowers failed this year along the rest of the deck - I planted about a billion seeds. Try again next year.

New efforts along the side:
We tried to rescue the sinking side of our house with more dirt and good plants. Thank you, Mom, for these grasses! Sedgegrass and Bee Balm in front of the heat pump. Giant Peonie to be divided and scooted this fall (for the rest of the "more dirt" plan). Borrowed from the prolific antique mum to fill in by the antennae "trellis" since hollyhocks didn't take. Trying for a redbud or a lilac to fill in there late this fall or in the spring. Along the deck, orange daylillies from the profusion on our hill, Rudebeckia is hanging on (in dryest clay) and another pretty grass called ____ from Mom. Hmm, where are all the blooms here?! Need some fertilizer and some weeding. But there are gems. Lots of daylillies and sedum. Phlox in pink, hot pink and white. Rudebeckia. 2 nameless groundcovers. Loved the pink Vinca annuals. Love the purple irises.

And in the back yard where Mom and Dad toiled and scraped, there is blooming!! And here is a close up:Snapdragons are definitely coming back next year. The hostas are happy I found them some shade beneath the peach tree (which is loaded yet again - such a faithful tree). The Cleome are scraggly, struggling so. Don't know why - since they did so well in the front yard. Maybe I'll move them to the back stoop that looks so sorrowful this year. Never doing violas again - they are wimps, see:

But there are some hopeful phlox here along the back, and others (a "hibernating" columbine - might it re-seed from early June's blooms, now d-e-a-d beneath the mulch?). The purple blooms with the we-will-survive green growth are another gift from dear Mom - but nameless, I just can't remember.And here are favorite: that viny guy is cardinal climber and he is POKY this year - maybe we'll get some red blooms and some hummingbird visitors. Last year's hit, we're still hoping it'll thrive sometime before frost this year. And of course these perennials are planted too close, yes mom, they are. But I really thought that yellow guy (name?) was dead when the forget-me-not was so vigorous in that very spot! And the purple guy (name?) is so determined to keep blooming I just can't bear to dead-head - it's a buzzing inferno of mini-bees all day.