late summer

the season has advanced quite a way since april when the first plants began to appear and it isn't over yet...the older cowpeas have begun to blossom...i saw two today ( top photo ) and counted six appendages with bids forming...i also saw ant scrawling along the vines and feeding from the sugary secretion the plants produce at nodes just below the blooms...the ants help in pollination, but the cowpeas are self-pollinating...the flowers open in the morning, close by mid-day and fall off the same day they bloom....not a lot of time to depend on the insect pollination strategy employed by numerous flowering plants...lavender with purple highlights, they are more flamboyant than the low-key floers on the northern tepehuan teosinte...most grass is unobtrusive in its blooms...the yams and cowpeas have filled the trellis and the garden looks a bit more organized than last year...kathy called it a "jumble" on her only visit and this year an alleged ( she made the allegation ) master gardener called it "disorganized" until i explained the purpose of the beds...then she said "okay" ( and for a master gardener she was certainly uncertain of what to do about the japanese beetles that were devastating her grape vines...just so you know, geraniums, foxglove, and after-fours are all toxic to japanese beetles...if you inter plant them with plants the beetles attack they will act as a repellant...under no circumstances should you use pheromone baited traps...trust me you'll simply lure every beetle in the neighborhood into your yard)...the garden is as organized as it needs to be and since the eventual aim is to move towards a permaculture there never will be neat little rows of vegetables that are weeded, mulched , and doused with miracle-gro...perhaps nature organizes itself along lines that aren't particularly to human's liking...hence all the tinkering with it...almost all landscapes are anthropogenic these days...i'd like to put some compatible perennial plants together and see how they arrange themselves.