Garden update and other stuff

Time for a little garden update since, well, that's about all that's going on around here! I went out this morning with my two canine helpers to visit the garden. Isn't it purdy?



The raised bed in front contains (barely!) spaghetti squash. And there is good news and bad news here. The good news is that the squash are growing.



The bad news is that the bed has a case of dodder, which a creepy parasitic plant that can actually smell other plants to find and attach to them.



These nasties, sometimes called witch's mantle, witch's hair or devil's hair, can't survive without a host plant to suck the life out of and coil up the host, draping bright orange tendrils over the top of the plant, smothering the host until it dies. Nice, yeah?

I have been madly ripping the dodder off of this poor squash plant, and finally had to yank the whole plant!

If left to it's own devices, this is what would happen!

Photo by Martin LaBar

But the garden news isn't all bad. The tomatoes are plumping up nicely.





The apples are doing well too.



I do have to watch Sassy in the garden, though. Yesterday, I caught her in a raised bed rooting around for carrots. And this morning, I saw her licking peas hanging on the vine!!

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Road, glorious road!

I took a little tour of the property down my really nice road this morning.



Even this little turtle liked my road as he crossed it!



I had to check out the beeeg drain pipe. From this



to this:



I drove past the field that I worked so hard on in the fall to clear, Yeah, if you let Mother Nature have her way, she will take it all back!

I even had started dragging the field to remove stumps and roots. Sigh.

The blackberries are starting to ripen!





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In the "Slap my *ss and call me Judy" department, last night, Stud Muffin and I had parmesan encrusted Talapia for dinner! I know! Fish and Stud Muffin in the same breath! And it was good!! We will be having that again with angel hair pasta with butter and lemon, just like last night!

Okay, everyone who knows us can get up off of the floor now!

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And last, but not least, as I was writing this post, the dogs started barking and whining like crazy! Nick was standing up on the window sill, but I couldn't see anything outside! I let them out the front door, and while Sassy ran off to get a toy, Nick headed straight for the shrubs in front of the new white fence.

He found a turtle!



Nick poked and sniffed, then he barked at it, and then he did what any self-respecting dog would do when the turtle didn't show it's fright at his ferocious barking... he whizzed on the shrubs around the turtle. Take that, you turtle!