Category: Otherwise useful

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Moving day

The two black swallowtail cats I moved to parsley from my carrots seem to be settling in after an hour.
So I moved the third. Here it is very angry still on carrots. Its orange “horns” are defense with a foul smelling liquid. Smelled sort of like a rotten orange to me but I have a bad sense of smell.
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Growth in rainbow beds during rain – July 1

This rain barrel normally catches rain during light storms but Thursday afternoon’s downpour was too much.
This barrel’s gutter downspout is often very aggressive and sure enough it hit the rain barrel perfectly.
After the downpour (and after work), I got bits of sedum to press into the mud. Hopefully they can root since it’s supposed to be in 80s for a few days longer at least.
If you zoom in, you can see I put two rows around each of the rainbow beds on the side slope.
You may also note that the zinnias are doing well!!
The back bed got smoothed down more by rain. See my previous post for how I continued shaping it on the next day (Friday). So glad I’m almost done with the major earth moving.
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Quarter Gram = 1.76 kg

I left this zucchini too long and it was 1.76 kg (about 3.9 pounds). Gram the cat weighs about 14 pounds last we weighed him.
Paula’s moss rose has a lovely flower!
Briar yawns. Photography of plants is borrrriiiiing.
Several inches of rain is settling down dirt over geothermal pipes nicely. Once it’s not slippery mud, I’ll go spread it out more and continue leveling and shaping.
You can see seedling ‘Will Rogers’ variety red zinnias on the right, and harder to see are ‘burning embers’ Linnaeus marigold seedlings near the peach tree, for quick orange.
Briar looks over green and yellow bed. A triangle of Fordham giant chard with lacinato kale in the middle. The two scraggly plants are coreopsis recovering from being potted up for a month. Around it are dwarf marigold seedlings for more quick yellow.
‘Country gentleman’ sweet corn is flowering.
Supervisor exhausted by his earlier brush with the monster zucchini.
Book “Bean by Bean: a cookbook” by Crescent Dragonwagon. Lent by the Bean Queen herself, thanks Heather! Lots of interesting bean trivia. More focused on cooking than bean varieties (ie differences among Lima, green, cowpeas, lentils, etc, not varieties within those).
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Rainbow garden ready for rain

The marigolds for yellow have started to sprout!
Zinnias continue to sprout.
This picture shows a broader view of the zinnias.
Break time in the backyard. Fun native grass.
I like the yellow near the middle of this red moss rose.
An interesting fly.
Alright back to rainbow garden! These are the recently arrived plants in the clever box. They even put finger holds to help you get the pots out without dumping them out!
Ready for planting.
In the front, two pineapple sage and ‘Jacob Kline’ beebalm, all red.
Looking the other way from purple. Here I added three ‘Diane’ purple Salvia greggii.
Once I got the plants in, I worked on the back trapezoidal bed. I got the general shape of it and the forecast rain over the next few days should let me get it smoother afterwards.
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Some seeds in the ground for my rainbow!

Also got mulch back in place over some cardboard. Seeds in ground are two kinds of marigolds (for yellow and orange), red zinnias, purple verbena (unfortunately a non native one that I ordered accidentally but it doesn’t sound awful), and standing cypress (which would bloom next year). I need to start butterfly milkweed (orange) cold stratifying.
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Loofah central

Last year we grew a lot of loofah (luffa? I’ve seen both spellings) gourds and processed them (removing the outer skin from dried gourds) here in the front garden. Obviously a few seeds escaped!

We have almost two pounds of seeds if anyone wants to grow their own…