Garden Snapshots

My task this week was to start to prepare my winter garden.  Meanwhile I enjoyed taking pictures of what is going on and got distracted here and there in the garden.

Just a few nasturtium have bloomed this year.  They always have interesting colors and details.  I could still plant a few seeds and see if we could have them blooming in the fall…

Yesterday I transplanted kale that I started from seed indoors earlier this summer.  This bed will be covered with a low hoop when the weather gets cold.  I also planted onions, lettuce, beets, pak choi, tatsoi, and turnips in this bed.  They are all vegetables that prefer cool weather.  The weather has been very mild, in the low 70s, which keeps the bed from drying out too much.  I will have to keep it watered this week though, so the seeds can germinate.

The onions I planted on Tuesday are shooting up already.  I can see a few lettuce seeds have sprouted, too!

Here is what is left of the lettuce I planted earlier.  I just keep picking off the leaves higher and higher on the stem!  I have 5 or 6 of these stems around the garden now, but have had to eat lettuce from the grocery store for my salads.

The cucumber have not been doing very well, but we had a half-inch of rain and this cucumber tasted pretty good.

Brussel sprouts starting to form on the plant.  This is the first time I have grown brussel sprouts.

Mid-day in a zucchini blossom.  Bees and cucumber beetle find a resting place.  The rain delivered a few zucchini.  I almost pulled the plant out of the ground, but decided to see if I can get a few more zucchini to grow.

Spider web in hicksii yew.  There are spiders and spider webs all over the garden now.  There are also more grasshoppers, cicadas, and I saw a beautiful orange and brown butterfly this afternoon.  I have not seen any caterpillars, despite the fact that my butterfly weed is blooming again.

This pokeweed plant appeared in my grassy meadow.  I am not sure if it came from the wild seeds I got from the nature conservancy or if a bird planted it.  Looking online some people love this native plant because it has berries that the birds love and it is somewhat attractive.  Others hate this plant because it has a deep tap root and it is hard to eradicate from the garden once it settles in.  Readers, do you have any opinion on pokeweed?

Morning adventure:  Yesterday morning Dan and I decided to take our coffee outside and we went to sit on a bench at Lake Katherine at about 7:30 am.  We noticed that people were fishing and fishing is prohibited there, so we realized that this was a special fishing tournament.  It was really fun to watch.  One young guy near us, maybe 14 years old, caught a bass that was 3 pounds 11 ounces.  He was very excited.  It all seemed to be catch-and-release fishing.  We left after a while and did not see who won the tournament.