more butternut squash

Ate the second one! I made a soup. It was pretty good- and very filling. I used a recipe that also added potato, celery, onion and carrot. I also added some thyme and sage. With just biscuits on the side, this was a great meal.

heat wave

End of summer, beginning of fall, leaves starting to change colors- and we're suddenly getting a hundred and one temps at the height of the day. I take a walk after dark because it's so hot. My yard is parched- the grass yellow and brown, the younger hydrangeas severely wilted, the little maple hybrid on the sideyard leaves turning crispy. I water what I'm able to, with fishwater from the tank cleaning, and dishwater from the kitchen. Still prefer to recycle that, rather than turn on the hose. Red-hot poker is getting priority treatment- I deadheaded and it sprouted a new flower stalk!- plus all the potted plants. Most of the rest is just left to survive if it can. 

Some things are doing great in the heat- sedums in the front yard, celosia around the mailbox, canna lilies (still no flowers though) and the cardinal climber has begun to bloom all over the place- 

so I get glimpses of the hummingbird more often, and have to go out trim off the reaching vine tendrils every other day, or it will take over. 

And here my sad (empty) garden has given me a nice surprise: that vine was a butternut squash!

I wasn't absolutely sure until I cut it open: yes.

Roasted it with some brussels sprouts for dinner- and it tasted good. There's two, I'm saving the other for a later day. Still baffled how it grew in my garden- my best guess is still that a squirrel put the seed there. I sure didn't plant it. Rabbit or deer has eaten all the leaves off by now- and even chomped on my 'kiwi fern' coleus nearby! but it doesn't matter, I got my squash.

They (deer) had also mostly chomped the flower buds off my turtlehead and the gladiolas on the larger sideyard- I never saw them eat glads buds until this year. But now I do have some turtlehead blooming, from further back in the patch against the fence, on one side of the yard. Where I guess the deer don't bother to reach. So there's that. 

I might get a picture, but it's too hot to bother going outside again now.

well, look at that

my volunteer squash plant is producing after all. Looks like a butternut squash, though. Which I tried planting a few times years past and never got anything. So did a bird or rodent drop a seed here? or is it a revert of zucchini (if my plant last time was a hybrid, I'm not sure). Have to wait a bit more and see.

some work

I've finally got out in the garden to start doing a bit of work again. Yesterday I cleaned up three of the beds, mostly pulling weeds, where I did a silly thing a month ago. On a whim I planted kidney beans. We've been eating the end of an older package of the dry beans, and I'd been tossing the unsuitable ones into the compost bin. Where some of them sprouted. So I thought hey, if the beans will sprout in my bin, won't they sprout in the ground. And beans will grow fast, like the heat, without needing much attention. So on a day when I really shouldn't have been working, I cleared the ground in three beds, made rows of holes with a stick, and sowed a few dozen kidney beans. No idea if the climate here is good for them, if they'll mature in time (planted late!) or anything, and it was a bad idea that day to do physical labor, even though it wasn't much. It was too much for me. 

But look! Two of the beds, about half the beans sprouted. Ha. That does feel satisfying.

That day I also cut back the dill, which had grown into a towering thing with drying brown umbrels of seed. Tall just like in that book I looked at disbelieving two years ago. I saved the seed.

It's much tidier around there now. I also cut back the lovage which was towering over my head and full of yellowed, bug-attacked leaves. That was all yesterday. Today I trimmed grass edge around four of the beds, and used it as mulch on the beans. I cut back the catmint which was going crazy and flopping all over the place, too tall. The ones I puzzled over earlier in the summer? Also catmint, they look just the same now. This little plant 

did grow up into blue sage! Cheers me to see it, even if there's only one.

In the herb bed I cut back the lemon balm which was making leggy seed stalks, and the sculpit whose balloon flowers were flopping all over the top of other plants, and happily saw the winter savory is thriving again! I trimmed that one a bit just to encourage spread. Trimmed lavender back from the edge but going to do a proper pruning later when I can take more care for the shape.

I startled a rabbit out of the perennials when carrying stuff back to dump in the compost bin. Found a yellowish toad when I was trimming grass edges. And saw the most beautiful thing- a brilliantly gold beetle. It looks like a ladybird that's a jewel. Not kidding, it's spectacular. There were two. I caught one and took inside put in a jar (with a loose lid) to identify. Came back the next morning to take a photo before setting it free- and it had changed color. Now a duller orangish tan with translucent edges and faint spots. I'd read they do that, but hadn't expected to see it. I hope I find another one and get a photo of the gold color, it was just so stunning.

There's a giant squash growing in bed nine. At least, I think it's a squash. I thought it was a volunteer zucchini, from the year before. The leaves are wrong- they're too round and not notched enough. It does have the big yellow flowers just like a squash, but only one plant so don't know if I'll get any fruit to find out. 

There's lots more to catch up on, but that little bit of work just got me so tired- in a good way! I'm happy to be physically tired from actual work again, instead of dragging tired from illness and recovery. 

My milkweeds are tall and robust and making fat fuzzy-edged seedpods. But no sign of monarch caterpillars. I feel like I always expect them too early, so will check again! 

Up the railings to the deck, the handful of cardinal climber I planted late, is finally getting its height. But no flowers yet. And no hummingbirds. The blue salvia on smaller sideyard is in flower, but I just haven't been out there enough to see if the hummingbird visits. I'm sad to think it might have gone to forage elsewhere for the season because I didn't have cardinal climber growing for it yet.

Last thing to note: I learned this week that I can soften crystalized honey in my greenhouse, and melt butter for a baking recipe, and put dough in there to rise. But it's not quite hot enough to melt candle wax out of the bottom of a jar! (Worth a try, I thought).