The Wait is Over

For a couple of weeks, we’ve been tending the garden and waiting for the next round of vegetables. Well, they have arrived. A week ago I picked two yellow squash and one zucchini. They were all a little on the small side compared to when we usually pick but I was running out of patience. I sliced them in half the long way and cooked them with just a little oil, salt and pepper and they were fantastic.

A handful of summer squash

It always amazes me how quickly some vegetables go to just about ready to pick to how they heck did they get so big already. Just four days after the first runt squash, we picked two more yellow squash and three zucchini that were just on the edge of being oversized. Then three days after that there are three more zucchini. I really like summer squash – I would not have planted six of them if I didn’t – so this is not a hardship. I’m glad that we’re actually getting so much from the plants this year. Last year we only got a couple squash before the plants quit. The yellow squash never even really got started.

Cukes and Zukes

We’re also starting to get cucumbers. There are only a few big enough to pick so far but there appear to be more on the way. We decided to try to get them to climb this year. We got our hands on some wooden stakes to reuse so we figured we’d give it a try. They are not stellar climbers on their own but once trained seem to be getting the hang of it.

Climbing cucumbers

I was happy to find that the first cucumbers were not bitter. It has been so hot this summer that I worried that they would turn on us like last year. Maybe they are doing okay because it has been consistently hot. Last year the cucumbers went bitter because a sudden spike in temperature stressed them out. Hopefully, they’ll hold their sweetness this year.

Just one of many tiny cucumbers

The heat has not been the only thing making this year’s growing season so different from last year. We haven’t seen any significant rain in weeks, now. The lawn is brown and crunch so there’s been no need to mow for quite a while. We had been leaving the back lawn mostly un-mowed anyway. My husband’s idea was that if we leave the clover and wildflowers in the backyard, they would attract bees. When they were finished blooming, the bees would turn to the garden. My husband is a brilliant man. Now that the clover is brown, the bees are busily working over all the blossoms in the garden.

Because of the lack of rain, we’ve had to water the garden on a regular basis. This has actually turned out to be a good thing. We can make sure the garden is consistently hydrated and fertilize on a regular schedule.

All the veggies get a drink

While this year has been dry, last year was overly wet. The constant rains fostered a fungus on my chard and beets. (click here for details) This year, I chose another bed for the plants, hoping to stop the cycle. Well, that worked but I have a new problem – leaf miners. These nasty little worms burrow into the leaves and eat them from the inside out. I did some research and found that there was little that could be done once the worms were hatched beyond cutting off the infected leaves.

Yuck! Leaf miners.

I did find, however, that with a little effort, I could prevent the worms from being on the leaves in the first place. It’s a fly that lays the eggs, so if you can keep the flies off the plants they can’t lay the eggs. I didn’t really want to engineer a barrier to I decided to tackle the problem post-fly. The fly lays the eggs on the undersides of the leaves so all you have to do is flip over each leaf, find the eggs, and brush them off. My chard bed is very small so this is a perfectly reasonable chore. Every couple of days I inspect the chard, brush off eggs, and cut off infected leaves and I think I’ve gotten ahead of the problem.

Teeny-tiny eggs

Chard all bright and lovely

There are a lot more plants in the garden just on the edge of being ready to pick. A quick rundown: the green beans are flowering like crazy and have put on small beanlets that will be ready to pick before we know it; the tomato plants are covered in small green tomatoes on the verge of blushing; we have a few peppers that are about the size of golf balls; and the pumpkins and acorn squash have tiny little fruits started. I feel we’re just on the cusp of a very busy veggie season.

Tomatoes

Pepper

Cantaloupe vines

Pumpkin

Green beanlet

Backyard Birds

We have a mixed hedge of cedar and laurel with some lilac mixed in that runs along the south side of our driveway. It is, apparently, a very attractive home to nesting birds. This spring a pair of grackles built a nest high in the cedars. Once hatched, the little birds made quite a racket, especially when one of the parents swooped in bringing food. It was really nice watching and listening to the little creatures, hoping that they would grow up healthy and strong.

Grackle with something yummy (maybe) for its chicks

On May 22, I saw a little gray bird hopping in the grass near the garden. My first thought was, “Oh no. The little guy fell out of the nest. I wonder if it can fly well enough to at least get off the ground and away from predators.” There are some neighborhood cats that I’m sure would have loved to pounce on the fledgling. But then I saw two more little birds on the fence nearby and knew that they were our little grackles on their first trip away from the nest. They all could fly (well enough) and seemed to be having a nice time exploring in and around the garden.

Such sweet little things!

I thought that was it for our little rookery. The babies had flown and it was now getting into late June. But then about a week ago, I saw a robin with its beak filled with twigs and bits of dried grass. It kept flying into one of the lilac bushes among the laurels so I decided to check it out. Sure enough, the robin was building a nest just high enough to be above my reach. Not that I wanted to reach the nest. We just always joke that robins are not the best at picking safe spots for nests. I remember as a child looking down into a nest of peeping mouths when a pair of robins had built their nest in the bucket of my father’s backhoe.

Robins' nest in a lilac just above my head

The robin had a problem, though, beyond the relative low height of the nest. A pair of cardinals had also chosen that section of the hedge in which to build a nest. There were a couple of bird fights in the driveway and it appeared that the cardinals were victorious. Three days ago we started to hear very small voices coming from the hedge. Today, those voices are much louder. We hear them frequently as Mr. and Mrs. Tomato-head dart in and out of the hedge to feed their babies. I wanted to get some pictures of the pair but they are always on the move. It sounds like there are at least two, if not three or more, chicks to feed so they have been kept very busy.

Mr. Tomato-head earlier in the summer before the responsibilities of parenthood

When I first heard the tiny peeping voices, I decided to try to locate the nest. I ducked my head into the hedge and took a look around. Lo and behold, there it was, on the left up in the cedars. I took a couple of photos and bragged to my husband about how I had found the cardinals’ nest. There was one problem, though. When I took a closer look at the photos, I discovered it was not the cardinals’ nest. It was that of a dove.

Surprise, its a doves' nest

Closeup of the nest - someone's looking at me!

What a delightful surprise! Of course, it should not have been that big of a surprise. A couple weeks earlier we had the opportunity to witness a pair of doves having fun sexy time on the roof of our garage. I managed to get a few photos as they were basking in post-coital bliss.

Mrs. Dove

Mr. Dove

I was still curious about the location of the cardinals’ nest, however. So, I ducked back into the hedge and looked around again when the Mrs. was visiting the nest. I was able to pinpoint the nest that time, though it was really difficult to get a good picture of it. I did get another surprise, though. A robin went flying off of its nest (the one I thought had been abandoned) and proceeded to chirp me a new one for disturbing it. So, it looks as though we have three pairs of birds sharing a fairly small space in our hedge. It’s like we’re running an avian maternity ward.

There is a cardinal nest in there, I swear!

Robin's just a little grumpy after I disturbed it.

General locations of the birds' nests in our hedge