GBBD August 2008

Blooms are hard to find in my garden in August. It is too hot and there has been very little rain. All I really have blooming are zinnias. They reseed themselves every year. I used to have hot pink, light pink, green Envy, yellow, white, and orange. Now I have pink, white, and......

...one little lonely yellow. I think I need to increase my zinnia gene pool.

I found a May pop. This is the fruit of the passion vine. I wonder what I can do with it?

Here is a rainbow just because I thought you might like it. Look really close and you can see the faint glow of the double arch. These always make me feel special.

Thanks again to Carol of May Dreams Garden for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

Weee're Baaack

We took the Monkeys to Oklahoma for a few days. They played in the water at Turner Falls and at Chickasaw National Park.

Here they are in the falls.

They fed a bunch of animals at a wild life park. BTW Giraffes have very long slimy tongues, just saying.

We hiked and saw some beautiful country. We all came back happy and tired. I can barely walk. If I had not started taking aerobics a month ago, I probably would not be able to walk right now.

I came home thinking maybe I need one of these.

Vacation

Going to spend a few days letting the monkeys play in a river. Be back soon.

The Golden Hay Bale

The hay bale knew it was destined for greater things than being eaten by bovines. So on the way to the farm, he jumped off of the truck and made a mad dash for freedom. But that left him stuck in the ditch. How would he get to the other side, the greener side? He thought he could hitch hike, but discovered he had no thumbs.

Night came and he began to fear the arrival of thieving gardeners who would come pull him apart to fulfill their evil dreams of free mulch and compost.

He saw flickering lights that grew larger and larger. The hay fairies had shown up to transform him into a golden carriage for Cinderella. They had saved him from the fate of cow chow and mulch.

Thanks to everyone who played in the comments. This is your story, not mine.

What the Hay?

This bale of hay has been sitting in the ditch on our street for a week. Any thoughts on how and why it got there?

Apparently, Pumpkin Growing is Sort of Complicated

Since I have committed to growing these pumpkins, I decided to do a little research on how to do it right.

1. Amend the soil - check.

2. Pick your variety - too late.

3. Plant seedlings - planted themselves.

4. Water - All the time

5. Fertilize with nitrogen during vine growth, phosphorus during fruit set, and potassium during fruit growth. Mine are at the fruit set stage, so bone meal will do the trick.

Here is where it gets weird. Apparently, there are a bunch of crazy people who grow pumpkins competitively. They want you to pull all but one baby pumpkin off the vine. Then they want you to force the vine to grow perpendicular to the pumpkin. There was also a pretty complicated set of instructions on pruning pumpkin vines. In order to insure pumpkin bloodlines, these prized pumpkins must practice birth control by putting baggies over the female blooms. The female blooms must then be hand pollinated. No bees allowed, hmmm.

I don't know if you can tell how much bigger this guy is from yesterday. It is growing fast.

Here is another a few days younger.

Here is an itty bitty baby.

I counted about eight pumpkins on two vines. Should I cull a few of them or let them all live?

How To Lose Control of Your Garden in 10 Easy Steps

1. Make a Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween

2. Compost pumpkin innards

3. Wait five months

4. Spread compost in your little garden

5. Mistake pumpkin seedlings for squash seedlings

6. Leave the pumpkin vines in after realizing your mistake

7. Fertilize the pumpkin vines

8. Water the pumpkin vines

9. Refuse to remove pumpkin vines because of baby pumpkin cuteness

10. Watch in horror as pumpkin vines take over your tiny garden

It took two pictures to capture this one. First growing amongst the peppers

Now wrapped around the birdbath and headed toward the road. That vine is at least sixteen feet long.

Opps, here is another one.

The little baby pumpkin. It gets bigger every day.