first full day of summer

it is a chill first day of summer at the south end of the inland sea...

it is rainy as well...average june rainfall for these parts is just shy of three and a half inches and my micro-climate has received better than half that amount in two days...everything is wet...

the wheat is wet...

and the lamb's quarters...

the maize...

and the tesointe too...

i was concerned about the bees...however the cocoons are dry and i see a couple hatched...even if i cannot find the bees...

a second look at the bee house left me thinking, given the height of the post it is on, that the chicken wire was not really adequate protection so i added a layer of the same critter net i have around the wheat bed in an effort to secure the bees more effectively...

the winter rye is a bit bowed under the weight of the rain...however...

the spuds...

onions...

peppers...

and roses continue to bloom in spite of...or because of...the rain...there is more rain coming they say and the radar pretty much confirms..a soggy start to the season...we will see if it lasts...and wishing a happy birthday to Jean of puddle wheat and strawberry fame...have a lovely one.

new pangea II

i suppose i would be correct in calling collards a native since it was here when europeans arrived and so i will...it has a bit of company in the garden, but in the microcosm of 35th avenue the non-natives are in the ascendancy...the other natives i can find ( and these are edible natives...all the non-natives are edible as well...i a not delving into the clover that is subsuming the garden's lawn ) are jerusalem artichokes and lamb's quarters...that's it...outnumbered eight to three..a mere 27% of the garden's varieties are native...corrective steps will need to be taken...more research.

fallowed nexus...

...for now, at least...cheap, broken scissors took me out to the big box home improvement store for less cheap unbroken ones and so past the filed behind the stores...it's due to be a bean field this season if it's going to be anything at all...and it's still early june...plenty of time to get soy beans in...but the last time this field was a bean field it was a no-till filed and that may not be possible to repeat given the amount of plant life that has taken hold there this spring...i am not a "weed" guy so identification isn't going to be exact and my definition of what's a weed is in serious flux anyway but looking up close and at a wider panorama of the field it looks like it is being colonized by plants that are not considered crops...i did find an edible plant or two out there ( it was raining fairly briskly so i did not conduct a detailed survey ) they are lamb's quarters..a native annual that most farmers consider a weed but which can be used any way spinach can be with comparative nutritional impact...i will no doubt be traveling past this field again...i have another bed to build in the community garden and one of these stores is my main squeeze for supplies form start to finish for those...if a crop goes in we will know it.

backyard on the cusp of winter

winter in de quincey's "sternest shape" is due to take hold here over the next few days with snow and sub-zero ( fahrenheit ) temperatures ( so much for the "this winter won't be as cold" folk predictions from some of my peers ) so i decided to take a tramp around the back yard to have a look at what was going on...at first glance beige is what is going on...the teosinte is beige from root to shattered ( it's one sign of a "wild and weedy ancestor" ) seed ear ( first two photos ),..then there's the foxtail and the winter rye in the third photo ( both unshattered...the rye because it is a domesticate...and the foxtail has me wondering why )...even the lamb's quarters have taken on winter color...but there's green out there yet as well...there's the winter rye and winter vetch in the fifth photo and the alfalfa is standing out form the background of the ice pellets that are falling form the sky...next weekend's post may be of a field ( or yard anyway ) of white.

buds, blooms, and july growth

i went to campus this evening after work and visited the i u northwest community garden to do a bit of data gathering...things there are moving along well...the green peppers in the second photo are budding and preparing to flower...the eggplants have flowered and the potatoes in the third photo are budding or blooming ( 44 days into a three or four month season still seems a bit early but i am uncertain of the variety planted there...if it's a 90 day strain then they're really on time )...seems like the annuals there are on time and doing well...nothing anomalous yet...after i finished measuring and photographing there i walked over to the perennial garden project ( still its official title ) to do some watering and look in on things...the jerusalem artichokes seem to have had a growth spurt and have reached four and a half feet and continue to produce more buds...the hopi blue maize has reached two feet and the larger of the two is thickening at the base in what i hope will be another branch which would be another step towards replicating the maize pictured in " corn among the indians of the upper missouri" and would be a highlight of the season for me, if no-one else...the larger of the two squash plants in the pgp has begun to flower as well ( fourth photo ) and the bottom photo is a note form my back yard that makes the presence of lamb's quarters in every stand of jerusalem articholes out there official...i still can't find any academic research that links the two plants in any sort of symbiotic ( or any other ) way but my experience shows me the two turn up together frequently ( but not on campus this year...yet anyway..another oddity )...things are progressing everywhere but not in a fashion i am accustomed to...still questions to try to answer and more work to do

more backyard natives

while i was out back planting cowpeas i took a look around and found another half-dozen lamb's quarters growing out by various stands of jerusalem artichokes ( there are four separate colonies out there with rhyzome barriers everywhere )...i can find scads of information about lamb's quarters being cultivated along with jerusalem artichokes, sump weed, and ramps ( all of which are native to indiana by the way and will be finding their way into my home garden...at least those i can positively identify ) by native americans but i cannot find any real verification of an affinity between sunchokes and lamb's quarters beyond what i am seeing in my own gardens...empirical evidence carries a lot of weight with me however and until some botanist or biologist tells me i am profoundly wrong i will be looking for this tandem...time for a stroll around the dunes and/or deep river looking for stands of feral jerusalem artichokes to see if this holds true outside the islands of human intervention i have created.