Oh Happy Day!

The watermelon has FINALLY decided to bear some fruit. Too bad this 'fruit' is currently the size of an olive. Sigh...It's like my yard is out to get me or something...

retarded little cantaloupe

that's right, the cantaloupe plant is retarded. The plant, for the longest time, has been devoid of most the leaves and has just been vining up the fence. Then, the other day I went out and I saw this:

Okay...so not QUITE

I was wrong. It's not quite the end of the season. Oh yes, I have stopped taking care of things (like watering), but today the stunted little watermelon plant out front has flowers on it. I don't know if it will be able to make any fruit...if not only because we are at about the point where the weather gets cooler, and watermelons don't like cool weather. well, here's to you little watermelon plant! I hope you are able to make a wee watermelon...it'd be even better if it was edible!

End of the season

I think the time has come to stop taking care of the plants. The canteloupe in the back appears to have all but died out and the basil is dutifully re-seeding itself. The oregano in the flower pot is drying out and I ought to cut it back. The tomatoes in the front don't have any tomatoes left on them, so I should go and pull those out of the ground as well. The peppers are still producing, as are the lima bean plants, but for the most part I'm fine with letting all of them die off. The flowering plants are doing pretty well...well enough that I don't have to water them or anything. Though the lantana in the front by the driveway are looking a little peaked, and the Shumard Oak probably should be deep watered as the leaves are starting to look a little crispy...but, at the same time, some of the neighbor's trees are already dropping their leaves, so it may just be that fall is coming early this year.

In other news we did some home improvement stuff, so now I've got a 24" long glass light cover and a round light cover which I want to do something artsy with...like maybe somehow use both as planters or something...though I don't know how to go about doing this...

more fruit!

I don't think I mentioned it, but the cantaloupe plant in the back did produce 2 cantaloupe. One of the fruits decided to stop growing and it just kinda sat there looking half-ripe for a long time (one side of the fruit had netting, the other side didn't). That one, was flavorless. Completely and utterly flavorless. It didn't taste bad, it just tasted like gelled water really.

The second one, however, was pretty good. It wasn't great, but it was pretty good, and when cantaloupes cost $1.29 at the store, and I only paid $0.80 for the seeds, I think it's a pretty good deal. This was the funny cantaloupe that originally started out wedged between the liner bricks and the fence, so for a long time it looked retarded. But it eventually rounded out and as i said, was good enough for government work.

Overall, I'd say I'd suggest the Hearts of Gold cantaloupe and the Cayenne peppers. Both have done well. The Roma tomatoes are good (as long as you don't eat a lot of tomatoes).

Spiders abound because it's been so damn wet the mosquitos have taken over.

Spinybacked Orbweaver web in the setting sun.

I know what's eating the beans

Okay, so it looks like the slugs and snails go gah gah over the bean seedlings. grr.