silks, spuds, visitors

it was not raining when i got to the campus garden...despite an overcast sky...so the first thing i did was water and then took a look around the beds...

the asparagus was upright and the two summer spears are beginning to "fern"...

the hopi turquoise in my bed is doing well...there was some robust japanese bottle grass ( aka foxtail ) in there as well...it is gone now...there's stinging nettle in there too...i had no gloves...pulling it will wait...

all the maize plants have at least one ear in process...which is good...

one of the volunteer spuds had died back...

and it lived up to my expectations by producing a fair handful of elmer's blue fingerlings...which will be lunch...or dinner...or something sometime...

the bed did have some visitors...this harbinger of autumn...and, more pleasingly for me if no one else...

for the first time in the nine or so years i have been affiliated with this garden i saw leaf cutter bees in my garden bed...

of course they were not on the alfalfa i deliberately planted there for their benefit ( they are alfalfa leaf cutter bees...but do not be fooled by the label...back yard experience has shown they have a capacity to utilize other plants with no seeming ill effects )...

no, they were all buzzing about...

the maize flowers....just like out in my back yard

divsion of labor

on the south side of the house there is a bed of jerusalem artichokes wirh maize planted along the permeter..i was just out there watching and...

the bumble bees were all over the jerusalem artichoke blooms...

while not two feet away the leaf cutters were busy working the cornflowers...and there was no cross-training on other blooms between them...prefernce? perhaps...although...

i have seen leaf cutters on jerusalem artichokes...

and bumble bees doing acrobatics on bittersweet nightshade blooms...certainly there were unoccupied bloons of both sorts...enought o go around and, curiously to my thinking...

no one was paying any attention tot he raft of maize and teosinte flowers out on the east side.

rainy silks

it was beginning to rain when i left work at noon and by the time i got home my mud spattered rain gauge showed and inch of accumulation...

however home was not my immediate destination and i seem to be arriving at the campus garden in rain more often than not these days...

the hopi turquoise there is looking fine...

it is in full flower...

and silks and nascent ears are apperaing...even better...

the hopi turquoise here at home is flowering as well...

and there are silks and ears ( well, one so far )...

not wanting to be upstaged by its descendant, the teosinte has produced multiple flowers...

and, i am pleased to relate, the first teosinte silks i have seen this season have popped up in the rain...while we are taliking popping up...

a second summer generation of leaf cutters has begun to hatch out of the bee house...

and i have found a few of the girls...

hard at work on a third...good news all round.

spuds and maize

a short shift at work left me with time to drop by the portage garden to see how the plants faired in the storm the other evening...the maize is unfazed...and somewhere about twelve feet tall...rivaling the industrial...

and with at least as many ears per plant...

i would surmise the presence of some robust support roots were of some use in all the wind...so the maize is fine...on to supds...

mixed indices there...more plants have signaled the end of their season...

while others ( of the 120 day sort one imagines ) are still producing blooms...so...

i dug what was ready...

took them home and cleaned them up...eight pounds five ounces...so closing in on seventeen pounds and the bed is not done just yet...i don't know about you, but the gardener is pleased.