Well, its been a month . . .

I feel slightly terrible that I took up the challenge to have a blog, only to not post for a month after I had been only blogging for a month. I blame my lack of camera. Meaning I blame my ability to misplace things. But the world has been saved, because as of this past Wednesday, I found my camera. It was in my fleece coat pocket, and as we are in a heat wave right now, I have had no need to use my coat! The garden though is up and running beautifully. I have harvested all of my strawberries, a good percentage of my red currants, all of the nanking cherries, and have started on the raspberries.

I have harvested and used my basil, thyme and oregano, as well as harvested and dried some mint. The roma's are growing gorgeous looking tomatoes, and the celebrity's are starting to grow some good sized fruit as well.

The gold bar zucchini's are not doing so well, so I'm not sure if I will get anything from them in the end, but the pumpkin has two fruits that have set and I pollinated a butternut squash bloom just the other day.

The carrots are all looking healthy, as well as the potatoes (which have flowered!). The bush beans are starting to reach their beginnings of harvest, as I will be picking some of them later today, and the onions are hopefully doing their thing.

And the peppers! I did have a little bit of an aphid infestation, but a pyrethien based insecticide took care of that, and the peppers that have formed are looking good. Sadly though, the heat we have been getting has caused some blossom drop so I'm not going to have the bountiful harvest of sweet red peppers I was hoping for.

And the grapes! I am going to have a hopeful bumper crop of grapes. At least twice as many as I had last year.

 To add in,  I have also gotten some surprise plants! Last summer my tomatoes were warring against both blossom end rot and blight, unto which I let win. Well they may have won the battle but not the war! My juliet tomatoes had dropped some fruit and I now have about 10 plants of juliet tomatoes that had seeded themselves among the green beans and carrots. I also got a free San Marazano tomato plant from one of the workers are the greenhouse I buy my plants from (we talk a lot about tomatoes). And to top it off, in the bed of celebrity tomatoes, I have two mystery vining plants growing. I am at the conclusion that they are either a winter squash (like butternut) or they are a melon of some sort. If the first, YIPPPEE! If the second, BOOOOOOO! With this heat wave though, my rain barrel has had no real use. That and the fact that my eaves through is clogged, the barrel is empty. As for the house, we have been keeping blinds closed, all windows and doors shut and no lights to keep the house from overheating and from preventing needless strain on our air conditioner. The person that invented the air conditioner should win the Nobel Prize. Also, the tale (tail?) of Clover's escapades in the backyard continue! Now, rather than continue to type up a novel here, I will end.

Happy Homesteading!!