One of those days

Very rarely I draw a complete blank on what to title a blog post.

This is one of those days.

The lettuce has done really well and last week I began using leaves for sandwiches. While lettuce needs consistent water I found earlier this year that the butterheads did not do well with a lot of direct water down in the leaves (rot), so each day when I water I take the shade cloth off and water between the plants with my water wand.  There is a volunteer cucumber in there.  I hate to pull it.

 

I am still covering the cantaloupes each night to keep them from cooling too much.  This has been a mild summer and we have already had night time temps in the low 50s,

I finally stripped all of the available beans off and have been freezing them.  I keep watering the plants because there are still some new beans developing at the top and I want to encourage the vines to keep trying.

The green beans are not easy to photograph on the vine.  But they're in there!

I usually pick them slimmer than this but wow, they look awesome.  And they are not tough or stringy.

Another thing that is difficult to photograph is a territorial bird.  The hummingbirds have been very active this week, and now we have finches.

I'm a pepper, he's a pepper...wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?

The gold finches have been working on the sunflowers.  There are sometimes as many as three brightly colored males maneuvering around trying to claim the food source for themselves.  In the mean time the females eat in peace.

Always on the wing

The finches are quite shy and I have to sit quietly about thirty feet away, which does not make for dramatic photos.

The female is sitting on a flower on the right side of the picture.

Today I found a little powdery mildew on my zucchini plant.  I removed the affected leaves.  It will be a long time before it damages the overall health of the plant.

The vegetable garden is looking a little dry and weary, but there is still plenty of food in there.

I picked a few small cantaloupes yesterday.  They had slipped on their own but were small and ordinary.

The best is yet to come out of the melon patch.

Still tidy.