Flowers, Fruits, and Frankenfood

Just in a nick of time, I'm finishing up the July block for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Yesterday I finished up the top-stitching and embellishing. Of course, the cat has the most comfortable spot...unless you think Ken and Barbie are inside, and then...oh, never mind.

Earlier in the day I needed to water the annuals and feed the birds. I stopped off first in the greenhouse and spoke encouraging words to the tomatoes. It's the best tomato crop I've ever grown. Switching to Romas this year was the right choice. Every plant is loaded with tomatoes just like this one.

This week we're having main dish salads a couple of nights. I'm going to harvest some of this beautiful lettuce. That's a butter lettuce on the right, and for some reason, its leaves get a tip burn. I'm not sure if it's something in the water or if they get burned in the heat. It hasn't been very hot, and so I'm wondering if it's something about our well water. In any case, I just rip those little bits off the leaf when I make the salad, and no one will know the difference.

The zucchini are thrilling me. I haven't grown zucchini for a couple of years, but planted it this year to please the pollinators. And look at these giant blossoms! They're so pretty. The blossoms are edible, although I haven't tried that yet. Maybe if I can get enough at one time. I tore out a recipe long ago that stuffs them with cheese. I'm not a great fan of cheese, and so I'm not sure if that would be good, but it's something to do. No doubt the man of the house would like it.

When I made the second batch of zucchini relish this past weekend, I came up a few ounces short on the amount of zucchini I needed, and so I just walked out to the plant and grabbed one up. It's so much fun to harvest veggies from plants you've grown from seeds. 

We haven't planted a vegetable garden for quite some time. The last one was the year I went to Ireland (2012, I think). We have a large garden, and it's a lot of work planting it. When I came home from Ireland, not a single seed had sprouted. As so often happens in Oregon, we planted the garden over Memorial Day weekend; then Tuesday morning it started raining, and not just a little bit. It was a drenching downpour that went on for about five days. I knew the garden was finished. All the seeds just washed away...a feast for the birds, no doubt. Anyway...we were so discouraged that we haven't planted a garden since. Maybe when Mike retires we'll give it another go. For now, I just scowl at the garden area whenever I walk by. That oughta teach it a lesson.

Speaking of teaching inanimate objects a lesson, the 24-hour timeout for the color printer did exactly what we expected, which is to say, nothing at all. No problem. The Resident Engineer tackled the problem like an Olympian and fixed it. It was a plugged print head on the black ink cartridge...not that anyone has a need for black ink. Anyway...he fixed it and it's up and running again. I suspect we'll skip the 24-hour timeout next time around.

We finally have some sunny blue skies so that I can get a decent picture of this latest sunflower. It tends to hang its head, and so the only way I can get a picture of the flower is to get under it and shoot toward the sky. This one is called "Red Sun".

In addition to the ones I planted from seeds, there are sunflowers growing randomly all over the yard. This one was planted by the squirrels in the pot with the geraniums.

They like to fill their cheeks with seeds, dig a hole, and then spit all the seeds into one hole. And so there are other little "crops" growing around. This corn, for instance, in the same pot with the marigolds. They picked up the seeds from the scratch grains we throw out for the ground-feeding birds.

I'm not sure what this is, but it's growing in the pot with the gerbera daisies. I tried digging up the seeds, but I couldn't tell what they were...squash, maybe?

While I was watering, I noticed some plums way up at the top of the tree that are turning purple. These don't usually ripen for another 6-8 weeks (usually after we've taken off on a month-long trip), and so I was surprised to see this.

Then I noticed the ground under the tree is littered with plums. It is shedding much of its fruit. That isn't surprising because it is loaded with plums. Still, this alarmed me some, and so I ran a sprinkler under the tree. It's been a funny summer...more rain than usual, but none for about a week now. I think the tree is responding by dropping its fruit.

Here were some plums I could reach, and so I picked that purple one to the left there. As expected, it was hard as a rock and tart to the point of being bitter.

Now that I've given it a drink, I'm hopeful it will stop dropping its fruit.

Oh yes, and remember the "pumpkins" growing from the compost pile? Well, they aren't pumpkins. Now they're starting to look like the expected Frankenfood...crossbred by who knows what. It doesn't look like anything I've thrown out there...although possibly, it could be a spaghetti squash. I'd go for that.

I ended up my morning walk in the yard by having a little conversation with my Sadie girl. She had quite a lot to say.

Today I'm going to continue on with my embroidery, and I'm going to get my hair trimmed. I've been wanting to switch hairdressers for quite some time, and I finally decided to try someone new. If she does a good job on my haircut, I'll consider letting her do a perm next month. Wish me luck. When I get home, and if I don't have to put a bag over my head, I'll start working on the next Chicken Buffet block.