communities

a holiday and out of the house before six to do the garden rounds...at the portage garden the maize is nothing if not robust and the spuds look like shrubbery...it must have been one of the sporadic nights when the sprinklers were on because the beds were moist if not downright wet...no need to water so no nred to hang around...so i didn't...

at the campus garden...

i found the asparagus upright and putting up at least one summer spear...

the einkorn wheat is still mostly green...

however several more ears have finished up...i believe we are looking at a late july/early august harvest...

over in the "official" bed...

the hopi turquoise is looking corny as could be...

and, incidentally, at least "knee high"...

the intractable alflafa...

is full of blooms...

as is the carolina horse nettle...

which are being thoroughly mugged by bumble bees...the blooms fell off the spuds when the weather became hot...these solanums will not lose their flowers and there will be fruits soon enough...another reproductive vehicle for a stubbornly colonizer...

unlike the portagen garden, the lawn on campus is looking parched...

so i irrigated again, even though the rock mulch appears to be working...not everyone got a rock.

early july yard

my back yard received half an inch of rain yesterday...

and temperatures are "seasonable" so after i got home from work i had a look around the back yard...

the maize is robust and more than "knee high" as of the second day of the month ( so is most of the dense yellow #2 out in the industrial fields by the by )...

some of its "wild and weedy ancestor" teosinte is next to it...not quite as tall...it isn't domesticated and "improved"...still it is looking sturdy...

the asparagus is producing "berries"...

the rye is looking blonder and i can see individual grains...

there's still some green out there though so perhaps another week before harvest...

the surprise grape vine is doing well...

and is getting on with the busines of attaching itself to the fence rather than "native growth" attached to the fence...we are pleased...

finally, bee moms have been diligently gathering pollen and nesting materials, laying eggs, and plugging tubes...

natural craftswomen...

this weathered old bee house ( and please not this is a photo from four days ago i was remiss today ) has twenty-eight plugged tubes of bee larvae and i counted three in the newer bee house just now...the best season on record for bee house useage...i left them both out all winter and the weathering seems to have helped...perhaps the girls appreciate sabi.

just a vine

we met the surprise concor grape vine ( i am presuming it is concord since the only other vine in the yard is a seedless one and i did not propagate a cutting from it ) earlier today...

there was a lot of vegetation growing up through the back fence around the vine so i went out to clear some of it to open up a bit more light and conserve some soil resouces for the vine...

as i cut back the vegitation the vines collapsed on the ground...mostly...

because that vegetation was what the vines had anchored tendrils to...

so i propped them up on the fence...

and pushed some tendrils though it so the would anchor there instead...we will be keeping an eye on this until they are truly anchored...we may be training vines for a while..

then i cleared out around the base of the rootstock...

and dressed it with compost...stay tuned...we will see where we get.