The Spoils Of War…

I just thought that since I’d written about the ‘beetle battles’ that have been going on in the garden I should show you some pictures of why it has been worth it…

The peaches behind the tomatoes were bought at the farmer’s market.  The okra and tomatoes are out of our garden. Cuz took this photo so I'd get to see the first okra picked since I was in Ft. Worth when it got picked.

Another batch of tomatoes…

Squash, bell peppers and okra…

Red, or new, potatoes.  We put them on the ground to wash off the dirt after we dig them up.  Saves having to clean the sink so much.

And for all you okra lovers out there, this one’s for you:

Gooooood  eatin’!!!

It’s A Jungle Out There…

A world of heros and villains, pesticides and matricides, guinea temptations and pupster massacres… but then the incredible beauty of growing something that is edible and beautiful.  The circle of life.

First the long overdue garden report that has been sorely neglected of late due to a certain someone… me… running  up and down the road but more about that later.

Walking out of the house the garden looks like a mini jungle. The okra, Rick, is over my head tall and like everything else, thanks  to all the rain we’ve received, is loaded with buds, flowers and okra pods ready to be picked, cooked and eaten.  

I had to throw these two photos in because I walk by them going to take the squash photos and their color just stopped me cold.  Any of you that have read me for any time at all know that, while I love my veggie garden, my true heart of hearts are my flowers.  These are in the south east corner of the big garden.  Had to have a spot of color, don’t ‘cha know…

Let’s talk squash.

We have had a battle royal with first with the Colorado potato beetles, then the squash bugs.  I say we but mostly my Cuz has been on the battlefront.  I put powered pesticide on the squash and potato plants and also the cabbage because the Colorado potato bug likes them all and they are voracious little buggers.  The next thing we knew we were beset by squash bugs.  Cuz was after them with clorox and water mixtue, spraying the bugs and the eggs on the underside of the leafs with that.  It slowed them down some but she ended up having to bring out the heavy artillery… liquid sevin. She is one mean mother when it comes to protecting the squash babies that she was growing.  When I came back yesterday she said she had gotten some squash and shared with one of her church friends.  Turns out the only squash plant survivors of the battle of the beetles were two of the good day squash and the larger of the bad day squash and they are still sitting on flowers and squash.  Yea!!!  for the g.d./b.d. squash.

I was watching “Chopped!” on the Food Channel this weekend and in one of the challenges of food to cook was squash blossoms.  I was so excited to see what the chefs would do with them because I had just learned this year that people often cook and eat them.  The show, while very interesting, didn’t inspire me enough to try to cook them but then nothing very often inspires me to cook… I just enjoy growing the different veggies and sharing photos in various stages of growth with you all.

The news from the bad part of the jungle… It’s kind of Quixotic that a hero can also be a villain.

Yep… the pupster Spud…  The same little guy that grabbed and killed a snake (though it was small it was still a snake to me) when I was working in the pen to make it secure enough for the guinea chicks broke into that same pen while I was out of town and wreaked havoc on the baby guineas…

The wire you see in this photo is now hot.  When I got back from Norman I saw Scott’s truck pulled up by the cage and I just figured that he was working on reinforcing some places that I had noticed before I left.  I had not yet heard of the massacre that occurred while I was gone.   I went in and made a comment about Scott working on the pen and Bro realized I hadn’t heard the story…  While the girls and I were gone, Cuz had let the Spud puppy out to go to the bathroom before bedtime.  When he hadn’t come back in his usual short time she went looking for him.  She found him red-handed or red-footed as it were… I guess without the girls to play with he was bored and had busted a hole in the chicken wire and played chase guineas with unfortunate murderous results.  When Scott and Merri arrived to help Cuz and to begin the reinforcing of the pen they did manage to find and round up two of the original 16 guineas.  We are now on the lookout for other escapees of the tragedy.  Bro met up with the breeder and brought ten more guineas back to the house.  Merri was hot wiring the pen when I got here and after she was finished she came in to tell Cuz that she could let the chicklets out of their respective small pens into the now multi-fortified and hot-wired big pen.

So these will be the closest watched babies until such time as they are big enough to be turned out to run with the other “survivors” that I have posted about previously.  And on that subject another grown guinea has turned up making the rounds with the Cuz’s grown guineas.

The guinea closer to the middle is the new one… it is more brownish colored than the Survivors but is full grown and now enjoying making the rounds of the grounds with the Survivors. No one knows where it came from but Merri said she had seen it up by the silos before but it is now making the rounds around the place helping to eat the bugs before they eat us.

So the circle of life goes on… the good and the bad, the kind and the cruel circles of life.  All go towards making this world that we live in such a strange and wonderful place…

Oh, and yes, the hot wire does work… I found that out today when I went to check out the babies and forgot about the wire and brushed my bare leg on it.  I’m sure it will prove to be an excellent deterrent.

Farm Report… And Bad Hair Day

Yep… I promised the next bad hair I’d show you would be mine and it will but first things first.  Tipper, feel free to use any of these garden photos you’d like on Blind Pig And The Acorn.

This photo was taken on the 28th of June,  the good day squash is on the left and the bad day squash is on the right.  Just to the right of the bad day squash is okra and black eyed peas planted alternately.  The squash is still getting good sun because it gets from mid-day to late afternoon west sun so I don’t worry about it being in too much shade for good growth.

Look at all the squash starting to come on…  this is a good day plant.

Another good day squash plant.  Spud helps me out by checking for mice, gophers and snakes… This is the littlest bad day squash.  It’s hanging in there and it is very healthy, but it is probably a tenth of the size of the good day squash.

This is the other bad day squash.  It’s about half the size of the good day squash and it is setting on a bunch of baby squash.  Four out of five of the good day seeds made and only two of the bad day seeds survived from planting day until now.

Now today’s photos…

Good day on the left, bad day on the right.  The biggest bad day is about 2/3rds the size now of the bad day.

Taken from the other direction the bigger bad day squash is hanging in and producing and has filled out enough to be almost indistinguishable from the good day squash on the right and the okra and black eyed peas plants.

The littlest bad day squash is now producing but is still so small compared even to it’s companion bad day squash but it should be noted that it is a testament to the strength of it’s seed that it has survived and is now producing squash.

There’s squash!  This is the bigger of the bad day squash, the flowers are now going on to baby squash.  Another 3 or 4 days and they will be ready to go into the salad or to bake in a squash casserole or fry up in the skillet with sliced up new potatoes and onions… mmmmm, I’m almost drooling just thinking about these choices.

Good day buds…

Huge amount of babies and another testament again to the organic seeds that were donated for this experiment.

I could go on and on about the fun I’m having with the squash but I did promise bad hair.  I need to set up the scenario first, though.

The front garden from the driveway in front of the house.  Looks kind of like a jungle out there…

Okra!  And some squash and flowers on the right and behind them are the tomato vines that were featured last week. We’ve had a terrible fight with squash bugs and the squash plant there in front that is yellow is succumbing to their onslaught.  The good day/bad day squash have been able, with a little help from us, to fight off the squash bugs and remain healthy.  Very impressive since we lost two other plants besides this one.

Here ya go, folks… My bad hair day.  I was in a lot of hurt today with the storm front coming in and spent most of the day in bed sleeping because I don’t hurt when I take my drugs and sleep.  I had gotten up about ten minutes before this photo was taken and hadn’t even brushed my hair… just came out to take photos before the rain came.

My Cuz came out to do some weeding and I asked her to take photos of me in the okra so Rick could see that, yes, the good Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, there will be a big crop of okra.  Lucky and Spud help me give you a size reference.

I really don’t have enough hair with my summer cut to look really bad, but a promise is a promise and this is the worst my hair has looked in a while.  I usually at least run a brush through it when I get up but I didn’t even do that because I wanted to get photos for my farm report before it rained.

Okay, okay… that wasn’t really fair since you can’t really see my hair. I guess if I can show y’all my butt I can show you my bad hair day so I snapped these on my web cam on my computer.

WARNING!!!  Put down any food or drink to avoid having to clean off your computer screen.  You may also want to have eye drops handy to help take the pain out of your eyes…

No, that isn’t a halo behind my head… just the sheen from the overhead light in the bedroom.  This shot and the following have not been edited…  You have been officially warned.

 

and even I cant believe that I shared with you all this glory…

Wouldn’t you just love to wake up looking this awesome!!!

I Know, I Know…

I’m late on my good day/bad day squash report.  I went out of town last Friday and didn’t get back until yesterday evening.  Bro asked me to dig up a mess of potatoes so he could cook up green beans and potatoes to take to the church tomorrow because a friend of my cousin had passed away and the funeral will be tomorrow… so I got out this morning and headed out with my camera.

The first stop was to the former playhouse where we keep the garden tools.  I opened the door and I was immediately hit behind my ear by a wasp, a yellow jacket.  It still is feeling like someone hit me with a needle full of cayenne pepper but I got the wasp spray and got my revenge and because I needed to get potatoes and take photos I grabbed my cultivator and got down to business.

First off, the potatoes…

You know me… I have to give you something for a size comparison so after I washed some of the dirt off they were ready for their photo op.  My Crocs are about the equivalent of a women’s size nine shoe.

  This shot I wanted to put in to show you how beautifully thin skinned these red potatoes are and all that was done was a light wash to get the dirt off.  Makes my mouth water just looking at these.

Now to the good day/bad day squash…

Good day squash is on the left and bad day squash is on the right.

From north looking to south now so you can see the littlest bad day squash and the bigger bad day squash on the left and the good day on the right.

This is the littlest bad day squash.  It’s hanging in there but it is way smaller than all the rest but I must tell you that even though it is tiny the leaves are looking healthy.

This is the bigger of the bad day squash.  You can see a couple of photos back how much bigger the good day squash is now.

Here is the first bloom on the good day squash.  The leaves are huge and the plants, the four good day squash that came up, are so healthy looking.  The broken stem there on the right was done when the storms came rolling through Monday night. 

Just a few more general garden shots now…

  The two rows in the middle, the left one is alternating okra and black eyed peas.  The right one is okra.  To the right of them are some squash and zucchini that were plants already when we planted them.  We’ve gotten several messes of yellow squash and while the zuchs were planted later and we haven’t gotten any off them yet there are a bunch of blooms and young zuchs going now.

We are going to be begging people to take tomatoes if they keep on like they are going.  We planted 15 plants of several varieties and the plants are full and big, almost growing together, and they have a bunch of blooms on them.

Here’s another shot where I tried to just shoot looking down between the rows.

Another view of the tomato jungle looking from north to the south.

This is the backyard garden. The plants in front are the broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower that are all on their way out.

Here is one of the cabbage that is still growing.  You kind of get the idea of size with Spud, the Jack Russell, standing there checking for mice.

This is the potato bed that I raided for potatoes earlier.  We also planted potatoes in the bigger front garden but we planted them about three weeks after we put these in and so these are the plants we’ve been raiding for the past week or two.

And to wind up this post I have to put in a picture of the yellow daylily that you can see at the back of the above photo.  It is one of the daylillies that I transported from the garden in Noble and I’m so glad to see them starting to bloom.

This is one of my favorites.  I love the clear buttery yellow and this daylily is just that… no golden yellow hues to it, just the very clean clear yellow.

This concludes the second good day/bad day squash report.  I’ll try not to be so long for the next post.  I had to put off the mimosa blooms and the bad hair post because I needed to show the good day/bad day squash report so I will try to get it posted in the next couple of days.

By the way, does anyone have a good home fix for wasp stings?  I still have this awful pain in my head…