Old McMaggie

As requested, I have more pictures of the things I'm growing. I put everything in the ground last weekend, and things started out with a little trouble. I was worried because I'd read that we have lots of squash vine borers, but I was obviously getting ahead of myself. The squash vines won't be big enough to be infected for quite a while, but cutworms were a much more immediate problem. Cutworms chew around the stem of a seedling, sucking the juices upward from the roots, and when the juices stop flowing, they abandon the plant, leaving the stem and leaves intact but dead and laying in the dirt. The first night, they got four of my plants and four more the next night. I'm sure the nice grandmotherly woman next door is ready to retract her invitation to come over for dinner sometime after seeing me mumbling profanity in the garden for a couple of days, but I finally came upon a solution. I used pieces of drinking straws, slit along the side and placed around the stems to protect them, and it seems to be working quite well. So here are the pictures:

First, the things in pots...

Cucumbers

a tomato

and of course the lettuce which has taken off in the last couple of weeks.


Next, the things in the ground... there are bamboo stakes all over my flower beds to eventually support the vines.

a pepper, see the straw?

a tomato

some cucumber seedlings

and some squash seedlings.

Also, a giant bush with these big white flowers popped up out of nowhere in one of the spots where I was planning to plant carrots. But it's okay because I got more tomatoes and peppers in the flower beds, so I'll put the carrots in the new bed I'm still working on de-weeding.

Finally, there are ducklings! Lots of them, all over the place.

And speaking of ducklings, here's what came of the yellow yarn I dyed. I've got one pair finished, two to go. Shhh. Don't tell all the moms.