Eudora Welty

I picked the first muskmelon today! We'll see how it tastes. In the meantime, I noticed a weird split in one of the other growing muskmelons. I leaned closer and discovered it was a monster's lair! Eek!



I probably should have flicked it off but I was a bit intimidated. It had more legs than me.

The ground cherry still looks cool and I still don't understand it.



The soybeans are coming in! They're fuzzy.



Lately every time I go to the garden, night or day, I get swarmed by mosquitoes. They eat any part of me that's exposed, including my face, and I come back covered in welts. The only thing that consoles me is the idea that the mosquitoes have a tiny little garden blog of their own, and that it has entries like:

Went out to the garden about an hour before sunset. The human seems to be growing well. She comes with a little hat! Look what we did:



Anyway, here's a recent bounty; not too bad.

I don't need to knit a little hat!

It comes with one!



Also, here's a neat cucumber knot.



In other news, the squirrels (or their accomplices) are stealing tomatoes regularly. I had to take the new baby tomato plant into the bedroom and put it by a sunny window to keep it safe. That tactic has its limits, though. Tips on squirrel repulsion will be welcomed!

Older; wiser?

For my birthday yesterday we spent two hot hours working in the garden. It was longer than expected, so we missed a planned fancy brunch at my favorite brunch place, but I didn't even mind. Amazing!

The other day when I went to the garden shop to buy tomato plants, Tia, who works there, made a pitch for me to buy a "Salsa in a pot." It's one big pot that had a tomato plant, spices, and four kinds of peppers. This one had a huge crack in it, so the plants needed to go to someone who could transplant them into a garden. Tia offered me a big discount, but mostly, she made me feel like if I didn't take the runt of the litter home and love it, no one else would. Which of course made me say yes.

Here are the four pepper plants, one day after transplant:



One's "kung pao" and one's jalapeno; the other two didn't have tags. Maybe they're Guatemalan insanity peppers! They're looking a bit droopy, but it was 100 degrees out today, and everyone was looking a little droopy.

In the meantime, when I came to the garden a few days ago, I caught this squirrel in the act! Eating a stolen tomato right on top of the supply shed. You may need to click on the photo for a clear view.



Turns out 2 of the 3 tomatoes from one of our plants were gone. It makes me feel much better to imagine that all of the thefts are the work of squirrels, as opposed to rats. So I'm glad to have seen this. But I shook my fist at him nonetheless!

One of the ground cherry pods is turning orange. I don't know what this means. I still don't even understand what ground cherries are. But I'm documenting it here, in case in retrospect it turns out to be relevant to the ground cherries' narrative arc:



For closers, a bunch of zinnias, and two pictures of the Mexican sunflowers:

Hatchings

Well, a zinnia's in bloom, and it's not very exciting.


But check out the webbing on the muskmelon: The first photo is from yesterday, and the second from today. It would have been so cool to have a time-elapsed video of this.



In the meantime, lots of fluffy muskmelons appearing (there are three in this photo):



And at long last, an eggplant peeking out. It looks so shy and tiny. I want to knit it a little hat.

Genes

So here's the first cucumber from the plant Eric started from seed. It's pretty different from the others - kind of fatter and rounder and juicier. And spiky!



Note the family resemblance:



Until recently, the eggplant was flowering, then the petals were falling off, and that was it. Apparently pollination is tough when it's very hot out (tell me about it!). But now it looks like a little eggplant is forming!



I know this image isn't very persuasive, but none of the earlier flowers turned into anything like this, and various other plots with eggplants developing have these. Did you know they're called eggplants because they used to be white? They bruised easily on the way to sale, and the bruises were purple, so they just bred them to be purple so you can't see the bruises. God bless America!

I realized that until recently the muskmelon kind of looked like a small, round watermelon - smooth with dark green stripes. But now, you can start to see the "webbing" form. My "Book of Cucumbers, Melons, and Squash" (thank you Library of Congress) says that it'll be ripe when the webbing is "pronounced."



Here's one of the flowers we planted! I think it's a Zinnia, though I'm not persuaded.



Random cool thing that another gardener told us about: After each poppy blooms, it won't bloom again. You can cut the heads off and take them home and dry them. And as they dry, they release the seeds - which are poppy seeds! I realize this is logical, but it's still funny to see poppy seeds spill out of these. If you look at the little holes toward the bottom right side, you can see more seeds inside.



You can cook with these, but you can also save them and plant them next year. Or give them as garden gifts to your small but loyal blog audience to plant in their gardens.

Way Off Basil

So we planted some basil several months ago. Rather, Eric did. From seed. He was very proud of himself when a healthy plant emerged from the ground. I named it Nigel. It was growing heartily, but we hadn't used any. So the other day I decided to pick some and take it home.

It didn't really smell like basil. In fact, it didn't really smell like anything. So I tasted it - a tiny piece from the end of one leaf. And it tasted so horrible I literally thought I was going to throw up for a few minutes after.

Now, granted, it doesn't take much to make me throw up. But I thought that was odd.

Today, I was in the garden, sweating away. A guy came over and asked if I wanted any of his herbs - mint, fennel, etc. I said no thanks, but offered him some cilantro or mint. I said, there's also some basil, but it tastes really bad. He said sometimes basil tastes funny if it flowers, and I told him it had flowered a bit. So he came around to look at it. As he walked around the path, I crouched down - and noticed a weird pod-like thing on it.

Turns out it's not basil. It's ground cherry! A little fruit somewhere between a tomato and a tomatillo grows in each pod. And it's edible. But not the leaves!



So long, Nigel.

Meanwhile, the other volunteer plant - the little tomato - has little tomatoes. Very cute.



I was finally inspired by that, and the high cost of tomatoes, to buy two tomato plants - one Big Boy, and one Brandywine. Do all tomato varieties sound like stripper names?



The cucumber plant from seed has an almost-grown cucumber.



And look how big that first muskmelon is getting!



Happy 4th of July.