It's the middle of summer...

...so what's up with all these clouds?  Oh, duh.  I forgot I live in western Washington for a moment.

Anyhoo, what is going on in my garden, you ask?  Well, this for starters.

Ooh, some bonus dandelion seeds!  Woo!

Perhaps that should have been for finishers.  Aha, I kill me.

You may be wondering how Squishy is doing, actually.  Well, we went through a rough patch, but I think he's coming around.  His foliage is looking a bit ragged, but I think that's due to the fact that he's putting all his energy into fruits now.  I'm not sure how much more life he has.  I've never grown zucchini before, so I'm not clear on the whole progression of things.  I'm pretty sure Squishy is not immortal, though.  Anyway, regardless of appearance, he is still putting out some nice fruits, which I always pick too soon because I can't wait, and also because they're so yummy when so small.

Ooh, two more on the way!

You may be wondering what all those patches of white are on Squishy's leaves.  Well, I spray him with this milk-water solution.  People tell me this helps stave off powdery mildew.  I have no experience with milk spray or powdery mildew, but if people say the former prevents the latter, then I'm willing to give it a try.  Especially because anything that ends in mildew can't be a good thing.

If you're curious about this rough patch I spoke of, I was having some fruit problems, where they wouldn't grow very large, and they had a funny texture.  I figured out that they were experiencing poor pollination.  I have since been hand pollinating them, and the fruits have been much better since then.

Now on to the other Cucurbits.  Apparently I like to throw in a fancy word here and there to sound smart and/or knowledgeable.  Anyway, Squishy II, or whatever I named it, is huge.  Well, they are both huge, I should say, since there are two growing in there.  My patio is officially being taken over by Cucurbs.

Wowzers.

The cucumbers are also doing great.  Check out the triplets!

So viney.

But this is where it gets so adorably precious!

Gweesh!  So cute!  This is the crookneck, obviously.

Also cute!  This bud belongs to the cucumber, and surprisingly it is already yellow.  But having never grown cucumbers before, I'm really pretty clueless about what to expect regarding blossoms and whatnot.

So that's what's going on in the squash family.  Let's have a look at the Legumes, shall we?  I hate to say it, but Climby is all but done for.  She's still putting out a few peas here and there, but they're tiny and oddly formed.  I've decided to just leave them there and see if I can get seeds out of them.  I'm not really sure how that's done, however, so I need to do some research.  Also, since I don't remember what variety I bought, I'm not really sure the seeds will be viable.  Apparently hybrids don't reproduce.  It's worth a shot though, I suppose.

You done good, Climby.  Thanks for all the sweet times.

The green beans are doing their thing.  I'm actually getting some beans out of these.  Last time I attempted bush beans, I got one lousy bean and then the plant croaked.  Anyway, the beans have been most tasty!  I've been throwing them in everything.  Yum.

So beanly!

Again with the milk spray.  The new plants aren't looking their best, but I'm hoping they come around like the earlier generation did.  They're definitely growing faster than the first ones did, thanks to the warmth.

Now, I never pay the flowers any attention when I'm doing this, but I wanted to show you the wildflowers.  I think they are in on this taking over the world thing that the squash have going on.  Because wow.  Huge.  Especially in the vertical sense.  In fact, they got so tall, they started to get all roamy and encroachy (I'm sure those are words), so I had to tie them up just to keep them from choking out the little green beans.

Umm, holy smokes?

Of course, Scruffy needs a turn.  He is still huge, and there are so many green tomatoes all over the place, I don't know what I'm going to do when they start ripening.  Which hopefully will be soon.  Hopefully.  Emphasis on hope.

I'm huge!

So plump!  I feel like they could start blushing any day now...  Also, milk spray.

And as a grand finale, I figured now was as good a time as any to take a picture of the entire spread, especially while the peas are still standing--or leaning, as it were.

It's hard to see the cucumber plants, but they are those bushy green fringe in front of Scruffy.

Note to self.  Weed the freaking garden, noob!

The end.

Just thought I'd share...

...I ate my garden's first green bean today.

Okay, yeah, I admit, it was a little young still.  But I just had to taste one.  And you know what?  It was every bit as good as the homegrown beans I remember munching on raw when I was a kid.  Delectable.

And, like the lamer I am, I didn't take a picture.  So there you are, left to imagine what that moment must have been like.  I know it's hard to imagine things anymore, what with the interweb and all it brings, but if you try really hard, I have confidence that you can make that green bean eating moment appear before your mind's eye and make you want to taste one yourself.

So here's how it went.

I stooped down to the plant and parted the leaves to have a peek at what lay beneath.  That's when I saw it.  A beautiful green bean.  It was about three inches long, which seemed "close enough" by my admittedly mediocre standards.  So I plucked the bean from the plant, broke off the stem end, and took a bite.  The skin of the bean was like that of a peach.  The inside was juicy and sweet.  It crunched ever so pleasantly in my mouth.  And I immediately wished that there had been more.

Painful though it was, I shared the season's first bean with Hubbyman.  He was grateful.

The end.

Giving you my cheesiest of grins...

I often think Scruffy looks smaller in pictures than he does in real life, so to give you some perspective on his size, here is a picture of us together.  My goodness, he is getting so big!  Seems like he was a mere seedling just yesterday.  I must cherish every moment of Scruffy's plant-hood, because those moments don't last forever...

I am five-five.  Scruffy's dirt actually comes up to a little higher than mid shin.

I didn't take into account the fact (mainly because I didn't know it until a week ago) that Sun Golds not only get very tall, but very sprawly.  This tomato growing business gets more interesting and more challenging as time goes on.  But Scruffy is already covered in little baby tomatoes--thirty or more at least so far, with tons more blooms--which makes me hope that all the craziness will be worthwhile.

On July fourth, I ate some little orange cherry tomatoes.  I don't know if they were  Sun Golds, but wow, they were delicious.  I hope mine are delicious too.

Now for a quick state of the garden:

I lopped off some of the pea vines because they were half dead, and also threatening to attach to my bush beans.  They are still producing by some miracle, despite all the abuse they've experienced lately.  They are putting out a ton right now, so I'm wondering if it's some sort of last hoorah. 

The bush beans are doing great, with lots of little beans growing.  The newly planted bush beans are doing okay.  The ones in the tomato bed are doing the best, although something is trying to eat one of them.  But as usual, I can't find the culprit.

The wild flowers are in full bloom.

The zuke is still zuking it up.

Hmm... what else?

Oh, the crooknecks and munchers are growing and growing.  I'm hoping the cukes don't end up being bitter from the heat.  It doesn't get too super hot here, but I have no experience with growing cukes (or anything else, ha).  All I know is that they turn bitter when it gets "too hot."  That's what they tell me, anyway.

And here are some pictures to prove it all.

The end.

Scruffy is as tall as the stakes!

Check him out!

My apologies for the crummy photo quality.

I planted a second wave of bush beans.  I can't remember if I mentioned it before.  Either way, here they are.  Adorable, aren't they?

I'm experiencing deja vu right now.

Squishy is doing okay, but he's starting to struggle a little bit.  I think it might be a watering issue, but it might also be a nutrient issue.  I'm still trying to get to the bottom of it.  It seems like the soil isn't absorbing the water all that well.  I'll water until it starts trickling out the drainage holes, but then when I feel through into the side of the bag, the soil is still dry.  I gave it a good long soak today, so I'm hoping the soil was thirsty enough.  I have several females growing, but some of the younger ones are aborting immediately after closing.  Which may be normal.  I sure wouldn't know.  I do know that unfertilized female squashlings will abort, but I sorta thought that took a couple of days.  Maybe I'm just imagining it that way, haha.

Squishy Junior is thriving so far, and growing huge already!  We had some high temps last weekend, and Junior was loving it.

I narrowed them down to two plants.  I have a backup plan this time!  Go me!

I seriously need to move Junior.  This is just not going to work.  Some rearranging is in order, possibly tomorrow.  Although tomorrow is the fourth, so I'm not sure if the garden will be open.

In other news, Climby grew eight feet tall and then fell over.  As it turns out, five foot stakes just don't cut it.  Poor things got too heavy for their own good, even with the support of one another.

What happened to Climby's head?

Oh, there it is.  Hey, it does make kind of a neat arch thingy!  ...Yes, I did this on purpose, for the artistic factor.

Stunty is finally no longer stunted!  Suddenly they just exploded into legitimate plants.  As previously mentioned, they have baby beans growing on them.  I hope they turn out yummy.

Row of glory.

Biggest of the bunch.

And as a salute to the independence of our great country, America, I leave you with this pretty, patriotic (sort of) photo, courtesy of Nora Frances, who raided my flower garden and threw her spoils into the pool.

Oh beautiful for spacious pools, for scarlet... something something...

The end.

Oh, by the way...

The moment of truth!  This is the part where I cross my fingers and hope for some size and color.

You done good, Scruffy.

And one more thing.

Baby beans!

So adorable.

I hope they taste nummy.

The end.

What's the haps?

Garden update time?  Yeah, I thought so, too.

I was looking at my pea vines and thinking to myself, "I don't remember them being this tall last time."  So I decided to look at a picture of the peas I grew last time.  And I was right.  They weren't anywhere near as tall as they are this year.  I don't know if it was the variety or what, but dang!

In case you can't tell, the one on the bottom is this year's.  But of course you can tell!

If you're wondering why in the world my vines look so jacked up right now, it's because we had a big wind storm that threatened to pull the whole thing down.  Because the top one-third of the plants were not supported, I tied them all together in some last minute maniacal bundle, in the hopes that they would hold each other up.  Turns out it worked!  For now, anyway.  The support stakes are definitely feeling the pressure, so I'm not entirely sure how long they will hold out.

The pinwheels are to deter birds.  No idea if it will work, but what the heck.

Guess what else.

This!

Which means this!

I can't tell you how excited I am about that.  And also this.

Yummy!

It's so cool to actually be eating out of the garden now.  I'm amazed at how thrilling this is turning out to be.

I'm also excited that the green bean plants are finally making some real progress.

I hope this means that we'll actually be getting some decent fruitage!

I don't know what to do with Scruffy Clone!  I put him in there as an experiment (I'd heard rumors you could do this with tomato cuttings).  But now that he's doing well and all, I realized that I don't really have a place to put him.  Which is a shame.  I hate to just let him die in that inadequate little makeshift planter...

Considering putting him out on the sidewalk with a sign around his neck:  Free to Good Home!

The end.

An exercise in patience...

I'm not generally a very patient person, although I try very hard to be.  Especially in the areas of my life where it's crucial.  Such as the times I find my daughter coloring on the wall, or my son using the couch as a launch pad.  So when I go out to the garden looking for something to do, and finding nothing to do, I often find myself disappointed and a little bored.  Why can't this garden hurry up already?  I want things to do!

So what do I do?  I make up things to do.  I move pots.  Like this one.

Hey, Scruffy Cutting--you've perked up quite a bit.

Yep, I think this is a better home for you, now that you're more established.  (Incidentally, I have no idea what I'm going to do with this Scruffy Clone when it's ready to transplant.)

I add more support strings to stuff, like this.

Remember when Scruffy was just a stick?  He sure beat the odds!

This support setup, by the way, is ridiculous.  I was motivated by the fact that one of the branches was so long that it was growing into the flower patch on the other side of the bed.  I used the string to raise the branch up out of their personal space.  (Control yourself, Scruffy!)  I realize this is the dumbest way to support a tomato in the history of gardening, but I've learned to work with what I have.  Which apparently isn't much.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah, stuff I do to pass the time in the garden.

I look for things to thin and prune and weed.  Oh, and I'm sure those five pieces of grass need to be swept off the patio.  And today, I more than likely will give the peas another string hug.  Mainly because they are taller than me!  See?

I think that makes them nearly six feet tall.

If nothing else, there is always the taking of snapshots!  And finding little things to blog about!  This helps pass the time. 

But you know, the garden does give me little things to be excited about every day.  Such as the fact that I'm eating sugar snap peas.

I think we'll have these with lunch.

Or the fact that Squishy is blooming.

Male flower.

So pretty.  And also edible!  Which I only learned recently.  When I get some extra male flowers, I'm going to try one.

Buds of joy.

This bud is a female.  Can't wait for it to open!

There's also the fact that despite their rough beginning, some of the green beans are actually gaining some ground.  Several of them are still stunted, but I haven't lost hope.  I'm probably going to pull one of them.  It is severely stunted, and although it is growing, it is just tiny and feeble in appearance.  There's a second one that may come out as well, due to some suspicious looking leaves.

The largest and healthiest of the green beans.  (I named these guys Desmond, then later Stunty.  Officially, their name is Desmond McStunty.)

I mostly get pure joy from the garden.  However, there are a few things I find discouraging.  Such as the fact that a few of the pea vines are starting to yellow at the base.  If I remember right, this is what they do towards the end.  But it seems to me as though they've only just begun to produce.  But hopefully the yellowing will be slow to progress and I can get a few more weeks out of them.

Hang in there, Climby!

There's also the fact that birds have been trying to eat Squishy Junior, my crookneck seedlings.  I'm trying to protect them with little cup collars that I pinned to the ground with homemade U pins (thank goodness for giant paper clips!).  I only had three plastic cups, so the most damaged  of the seedlings has been left out, since I want to give the healthier ones a fighting chance.  I'm trying to deter the birds with pinwheels.  Oddly enough, they haven't touched the cucumber seedlings.

Protective cups on Squishy Junior.

Bird damage.

Ignored cukes.  They feel totally dissed.

Or the fact that a mole has chosen my legume bed as a great place for his tunnel network.  Which may account for the yellowing peas for all I know.  But it seems that the plants that are most affected are the flowers that I placed along the border of the corner patch.

Looking less like a snapdragon and more like a droopdragon.

There's also the fact that planting flowers in the tomato bed may have been an imbecilic decision on my part.  At the very least, I have got to do some thinning and reigning in before they take over.

Holy smokes, this is starting to look more like a flower bed than a tomato bed!

But to end on a positive note, Squishy is downright enormous.  I had to pull him away from the corner because he was dipping into the lawn.  I also pruned three of the lower branches.  They were resting on the plastic of the soil bag, and I just thought that was a recipe for fungus.  But doesn't he look spiffy?

Just beautimous.

The end.