Birthday Cake!

 It's an angel food cake with vanilla cream filling, chocolate sauce, and raspberries on top.

Happy fourteenth birthday, Owen!

Pig Day

On Friday Owen put an ad on Craigslist;  by Saturday morning Jeff had five responses.  By Saturday afternoon four pigs were gone, and the rest will be gone by Monday. So next time we'll ask for more per head (the price was $30 each), and maybe Serena will be having another litter soon.

The Melon Bed of my Dreams

There are 9 (or 12 -- I forget) "hills" in there, marked by tires, so we could find them to water.

Fortunately it's raining, so we don't have to find them.

A watermelon -to-be.

Cantaloupes.

Our melon bed has never been so well-mulched, and therefore weed-free.  Now no weed could compete with the plants -- and the melons are happy to grow.  They don't mind life on the Great Plains!

Not in the Garden

What Owen is taking pictures of. 
She has a chew.

Dog and Cats

Sasha gets bigger and smarter every day.

This year, grey is the theme.

On The Other Hand...

This praying mantis on the end of the clothesline post is little.  But cute? Ah, no.  An alien among us, perhaps.  While I took the picture, its head would swivel to watch me stumbling around to change angles. It was listening to me telling it to "hold STILL." It did -- a bit.

Is Anything Little, Cute?

"I'm little;  therefore, I'm cute."

Or is that "we"?

The Tomato Forecast

I can't ever just "wait and see."  Every walk through the garden includes speculation about the coming harvest.  So, what is the tomato forecast, you ask?  

Well, the roma types are setting and growing fruit well.  The actual fruits do not much like the heat, I've noticed, since there are strange kinds of damage that I'm unfamiliar with -- so blame it on the heat.

But there are tomatoes on those plants.

The big table varieties, Mortgage Lifter and German Pink, are not showing any fruit.  At least I'm not seeing any.  I always hope that when they start turning red I'll suddenly spot many more -- but at this point they don't seem to be there.  Here's hoping I'm wrong...

Yesterday we got almost 1/2 an inch of rain in a horizontal downpour that I missed (off grocery shopping).  Chance for more today, but we're also watering.

The Onion Harvest

They are drying well in the basement -- since we got the dehumidifier going.

Serious Mulch

Finally, we have some serious-looking mulch.  Last Saturday we got some spread around.

Two rows of beans above and cuke plants beginning (at the flag).

Two rows of kidney beans.

Grapes to the right, zuchini to the left.  In the middle, peppers, and far off at the top, melons.

On the day we returned from Colorado, the boys had all been out to a harvested wheat field where the farmer was baling the straw.  He sold it at two-fifty per bale if you picked it up in the field.  They loaded many more bales than they should have on the trailer (50), made it home, and now we can defend against the weeds.  Of course, now that it's hot, no weeds are sprouting or growing.  In fact, last night I witnessed a first:  bindweed wilting in the heat and dryness, while the grapes looked okay.

Tomorrow the heat is supposed to ease.  That means ninety-four instead of one hundred.