Melon Bites

Cooking with Gardens...

Mikes parents made the eggplant I picked into eggplant parmesan. I didn't get to taste it but it looked really good. My mom mixed yellow and red cherry tomatoes to make a tri-colored spinach tomato salad. I have yet to use heat with anything but the pickings are good. 

Eggplant Parmesan

Melons have doubled in size over the last two days, even though its been unseasonably cool.

Large flat melon doubled and rounded out.

Today's tomato harvest, my portion, Mikes dad picked a few other earlier.

Small strawberry harvest from 8G bucket. Slowly coming back now that the rain has let up a bit.

Baby watermelons from the raised bed with bite taken out of them. When I saw these I picked them off so that the energy  the plant was putting into trying to grow them would go to growing new ones. I also double enforced what I thought to be the weak spot in the fence allowing animals in to bite them. I hope I'm right because I looked all over for other weak spots and saw nothing so at this point getting full raised bed melons counts on the spot I enforced being it. 

Fuzzy Tiger

Held Hostage...

When I see an insect that scares me I always freeze up, especially when I'm inside. I am terrified of caterpillars. When I was 4 I went to NCRC a beautiful mansion transformed into a preschool with expansive grounds covered in blackberry trees and caterpillar nests. I used to like the little gypsy moth larvae they entertained me up until that faithful day when one fell on my tennis shoe and I froze. It was the first occurrence of me freezing at the sight of these fuzzy creatures and I didn't know what to do. I felt like I couldn't pick him off, even though I held them all the time up until then, and started shaking my foot. The thing was stuck. I started to panic and shook harder and harder with a final dramatic fling and I'm sure eminent death. Since then I've been phobic when it comes to any caterpillars so when I intended to check on container drive this morning and saw a fuzzy brown caterpillar sitting in the middle of the walk, my only path, I froze. I felt like I was being held hostage. I couldn't walk over to the drive and I didn't want to let him out of my sight for fear that he'd find his way inside or into my plants where he'd "get me" later. So I stood there frozen thinking of how to get rid of him. Finally I saw the yard stick and grabbed it. I slowly approached the fuzzy worm with the stick and pushed him a bit to see if he would attempt a mad dash. He didn't. I actually think he was dead; dropped by some evil bird to frighten me. After pushing him around for another second or two to check the status of life I chopped him. Guts shot out so I felt comfortable that he was dead and flung him, with the stick, under the table where he'd shrivel and disappear out of sight. 

I moved into container drive slowly, just in case more were about. I checked the containers then ran inside. I was still too thoroughly creeped out to stay out. When I got inside I looked up "brown fuzzy caterpillar" and got "wooly bear", a lot, which was incorrect but then I found out that it was a garden tiger moth larva. Gross! I'm starting to think that gardens attract too many gross worm varieties for my particular phobia. 

Garden tiger moth or some other variety of tiger moth larva.

Eggplant grew another inch overnight. 

Darker and darker! This sugar baby should be ready in a couple weeks! 

WATCH! Fruit Set

Fruit Setting...

When I first started my garden I didn't quite know what all the references meant when they said "fruit set" which caused me anxiety to no end. Things change when fruit starts to set in... I could of guessed that it was when the fruit started to grow but I didn't know what point in there growth was true setting. So now that I do know and can tell you that it means when the flowers start to turn I wanted to show you. 

All of our plants are at "fruit set" or have been "setting" for awhile now.