We went by the garden today, expecting things to be pretty much done. We hadn't been by in weeks, and it's gotten quite cold. But in addition to three eggplants, we found tons of blooms!
These weren't ours; they're in a neighboring plot. But too lovely not to take a picture for you:
Two bugs on a weird pod that appeared on a vine among our beans...
The coxcomb, getting a little fluffier!
This is from a few days ago. Click on it to zoom in and you can see a fuzzy bumblebee hugging the base of the flower.
This is cool. See how the stalk is entirely bent over? It's been like that for at least a couple weeks. But I had a feeling it was still alive, and we saw today that this beautiful flower still blossomed even in this position!
The bigger ones got redder, for some reason.
Well, those odd purple flowers (see the first photo from last time) turned into these even odder spiky balls. Who know what comes next!?
The coxscomb are getting huge and competing with the zinnias for height.
And the okra, as usual, is thriving.
Looks like the sunflowers will be opening soon.
Finally: strange zinnias! From our burpee mix. These are weird and neat.
And this is the only non-zinnia that came up in our "wildflower mix." Doesn't it look a little like a Muppet?
The okra plants are only about 18" high, but look how big the leaves are! (That's my hand, for scale).
I noticed that the vines growing up through the tomato plant were covered with bright yellow aphids. I pulled the vines out and we tried to make sure there were none left on the tomato plants. The aphids are kind of gross, but at least these are a nice color! (click on the photo for a closeup):
And it looks like they're making more ladybugs!
We've also got a thriving bunch of zinnias now, very cheerful.
We had some extra room since some other flowers we planted didn't grow. So since we had such great luck with the sunflowers last year (thanks, Oma!!!), we decided to try another kind. I started the seeds indoors so the birds wouldn't get them, and then transported these little guys outside in peat pots (you can see the outlines around each one; the pots should dissolve in the soil). So far so good!
The beans have grown into a massive wall. Unfortunately I can't seem to rotate this photo directly, so please tilt your head 90 degrees to the right:
Here's a baby eggplant emerging! (again, click for a closeup if you can't see it).
Close-up of the bean vines... Twirling, always twirling!
And the lavender, which diligently grows all summer without us calling much attention to it. It attracts a lot of bumblebees, which is good for everything else.
Here's an okra flower. It's mostly white, but you can see the nice dark purple section on the bottom. Supposedly they're edible, but they seem to be covered in ants, so we'll pass.
Finally, some baby beans! I was getting worried.
And an inedible, but very happy, harvest.
We finally staggered out into the heat to water the garden today. It had only been a couple days, and we've had longer gaps before, but because of the very high heat (I assume), things were a little droopy.
But it doesn't seem to be hurting productivity too much. One of our eggplants has four growing now!
Hi! Finally getting things going this year! Here are some pole beans. I planted around one pole each week, from left to right, so they decrease in height as you look across...
The okra grew really fast and we have four plants this year so we should get a lot of pods.
The first eggplant! Just one.
And some tomatoes on the way....
We've planted a bunch of flowers from seed. I have high hopes for this little patch of ground...
