Holiday Birthday

 Every year for my birthday for the past few years, the kids have taken me to Gaylord to see all the holiday decorations. It's my favorite place to go during the holidays, but pictures never do justice to how gorgeous all the decorations are.  

They have a cute little holiday land for kids, too, that was really great this year. We rode the train, road the river boat, and walked around to every themed room. My favorite is always the garden room but they all look fabulous.

Thank you for another great holiday birthday!

Chilly days and no power

 Living in rural areas can be a real adventure some days. November isn't usually super cold, but this past weekend we had a deep chill, quite a bit below normal, and then the power went out. 

No matter. I had a nice time lighting candles and cuddling with my furry friends. 

Pancake, my couch dog, 35 lb

Piper, my tv room cuddler

Sassy, with me since 2009

Halloween weekend

Half marathon in the morning. Trunk and treat in the evening. Middle of the day Included fish tacos and a nice long nap.

Happy Halloween

trunk or treat after church

Wenceslaus square

So pretty and perfect weather.

Dinner under Charles Bridge

Prague. What a wonderful old city.

it's Spaghetti!

So our mystery plant did end up being a Stripetti - if you remember, that's a hybrid cross between a Spaghetti squash and a Delicatta squash.  Stripetti are supposed to have better flavor and store better/longer than a traditional spaghetti squash.

So, first I cut it open, and was surprised, it was not as difficult to cut as a traditional Spaghetti or even a Butternut.

First I cut it open and scraped out the seeds. I am saving these for next year!

Then I put them on a tray and sprinkled a few drops of avocado oil inside the bowl of the squash, and dropped in some diced onions. Garlic would have been nice, too, but I was hurrying.

After it came out of the oven I scraped out each half and filled two big containers full of the spaghetti strands. Not to mention what I ate along the way. I love this with just a little salt, nothing else!! Margaret likes it with Sauce!

I took a gamble on whether it was ripe or not, but I decided this is the oldest one on the vine, and the deepest in color.  And it was perfect.  There are 5 more of these out there on the one vine, more being generated every day.

Clavate Tortoise beetle.

We have the most interesting insects here. This little creature was just sitting on a leaf in my garden. A see-through outer body and distinctive markings made it quick for BugGuide to identify.

These beetles eat plant foliage like caterpillars. They especially like sweet potato vine which I have an abundance of.

Aug harvest.

Autumn is already showing its colors as well as giving its fall harvest. The first Stripetti squash and the last eggplant. Plus an abundance of banana peppers. I like the peppers before they turn red and lose their crispness.

Big salad for dinner tonight.

Caterpillar day

Every day I go out to inspect my garden multiple times a day. Morning, mid morning, mid day, and always in the evening. Yesterday about mid day I was standing out there looking at things and listening and I heard this faint sound of something dropping on to paper.

I always put cardboard on area I want to keep the weeds down. I usually cover it with mulch but my newest cardboard only went down a couple of days ago. That's where I heard that sound.

When I inspected closer I noticed what looked like insect poop. You know it once you've seen it and I've seen plenty. I followed it up and found, hidden underneath the potato leaves, these lovely white caterpillars.

As I turned over every leaf I found more than 2 dozen of these newly hatched fur-bugs. They were defoliating my potatoes so I pulled them off and put them in my insect hatchery.

Today they were happy to be fed. Many caterpillars eat only the plant they hatch on, such as the monarch caterpillar. Some of these, I fear, only want my potatoes, while the tan colored ones did not seem to mind being fed poplar leaves from a young seedling I had.

I thought the kids would enjoy and learn from watching caterpillars form the chrysalis then hatch in a couple of weeks. When food runs low they will make their cocoon. It should take 2-3 weeks after that for them to emerge. I hope I am here to see some of them hatch and fly away.

More crazy plant saga

A few days ago a new fruit appeared on my alien plant. This one is different from the others - this one is round. That's when I noticed a variation in the leaf size and shape.

The leaves are distinctly different yet everything growing here is from a single root. Hybrid plants can often produce fruit from one of its ancestral plants. Everyday I go out there to see what else this vine has for me. If I save seeds from any of these fruits I may even get something slightly different again. All part of gardening fun.

Crazy garden spider

I'm always amazed at the species of insects and arachnids in this part of the world. Today I found this gorgeous garden spider - one I have never seen before. She sits in my blueberry bush and performed a nice dance for this video in catching a smallish gnat.

Up close, and from underneath her she is brightly colored. Reds and yellows with some brown and black stripes. She is quick. Her size in diameter including her legs is about the size of a penny.

Most garden spiders we see here are the yellow and black ones that are 3 times bigger than this one, and those make new webs every single day from a tree branch across to another point - sometimes to the ground or across the patio. Those spiders keep me in the house after dusk in late summer, as I hate walking through their giant webs. Last year one of those webs caught a hummingbird I had to rescue.  Those are powerful webs to say the least.

This spider does not make such a large and sticky web. This is more a true garden spider - at least, I hope it is because its red color always puts me on alert. I really don't want this one getting on me, but she is lovely to look at. It's the most beautiful spider I have seen here so far. I hope to see many more.


UPDATE:  I just received a message from SpiderID.com where I posted this photo. Apparently this is a rare spider most often seen in the eastern US, nearly always in August.  Also found down into Central America. It's called Arrow shaped micrathena, scientific name is Micrathena sagittata.  It is part of the Orb Weaver family. 

Augie's annual bath and shave

Augie was overdue for a shave, but the summer has been so cool it has been OK.  This weekend it starts to warm up the 100+ temps again, and his thick triple coat was not healthy. I didn't want to see him get heat stroke (yeah, dogs get this, too!).   So, he went to the groomer.

It took both Michelle and me to get him into the back of the car.  He howled all the way to Dickson.  He was there 4 hours. When I picked him up, the two attendants could not get him out of the cage so called me in to help. I had to drag him out and it took two of us to push and haul him into the car once again.

It's such an ordeal to get him in the car, I decided to take him straight to the vet for shots, which were also overdue. He got coddled and poked and babied, and by the end he was HAPPY to get into the car one more time. It took to of us to push him all the way TO the car but once there he got into the back seat by himself - first time ever!

The minute he got home he took a good long soak in the pond. Then he and Hamilton went at it for the next 45 minutes. Ham just KNEW this was not his friend Augie. Didn't smell right, definitely didn't look right. Hamilton would not even let Augie go out to see the goats till he knew it was for sure his friend.

Everything is back to normal now.  Just in time for the heat.

Crazy squash plant

Every day someone else stops by here and is confused by my squash. Delivery people, mail carriers, politicians and neighbors come by and want to know what it is. Larger than any squash any of them have seen, they just scratch their heads and exclaim and leave shaking their heads.

I think I found it. After searching blogs and garden pictures I think I discovered it; this plant looks closest to a winter squash called Stripetti. It's a cross between a Spaghetti and Delicata squash.

I stopped trying to keep it from growing through the fence. Now I have a hammock for one and may just let the other go and see what happens. Right now the largest one is about 15" long. And almost that big around.

It's one plant and it is taking over the yard. It's fun to watch how fast these things double and triple in size. I am anxious to taste them and to see how many I actually get.

The sound of silence

This is what solitude sounds like where we live. Pitch dark. 10:45 pm. Aug 1.

Tonight’s dinner.

Harvest from today. I could not eat it all.  The potatoes came from one old one Michelle found in her cabinet. The harvest from that one potato is about 25. This is my first picked butternut squash. 

Mystery vine

Late in the spring this year, after I had planted out my flower bed, the birds dropped a seed from someplace. When it started to grow I recognized it as a squash/gourd family vine so wanted to just let it grow. That happened a couple of years ago and I ended up with two cute little pumpkins.

This vine is not a pumpkin. A half dozen people who have visited here still can't decide what it is. It has grown to over 20 feet long with leaves that span 2 to 3 ft each. It has both male and female flowers and is already producing some type of fruit. At first it looked like a gourd. Then it resembled a watermelon, and now it looks like some type of squash. The fruit more than doubles in size every single day.

The only reason this plant is only 20 ft long is due to the fence I put around it to keep people from driving over it and the lawn guy from weed whacking it. Also to keep the cats off it, though with its sharp needlelike thorns I am not sure cuddling underneath its shade would be all that comfy.

I can't wait to see what this is going to be. It's possible that the fruit might be a cross pollinated one, bees cover the flowers every morning and folks here have all sorts of vining plants, many of which can cross pollinate easily.

If you recognize the fruit on this vine let me know. Today it is about 10" long and much darker in color than yesterday.

Today’s harvest

Making a veggie wrap with stuff trim the garden

Eggplant flea

This is a strange insect whose entire life cycle depends on eggplants. They start off so tiny you can't see them, but you know they are there is the eggplant plant has tiny holes in the leaves. They lay their eggs in the dirt then climb the plant when they hatch.

As the insect continues to feed it starts to swell like the one in the foreground. They are still very small, no bigger than the nail on my baby finger. But they are called fleas because they hop when startled. You can see a smaller one here too, those are the ones that hop more. The fat ones just sort of fall off if you startle them because they are so fat.

Chores for summer

I've been wanting to tackle this. Making a permaculture bed in an unused corner of the yard.

First I got out the chain saw and cut up all my dead logs around the yard.

Then I weed whacked all the weeds and lined the area with the sticks and logs making a base for the underneath compost.

Next I covered the pile with grass clippings. That's a good nitrogen source and against the logs will make things nice and hot as it cures.

Then I covered the grass with shredded paper and dead leaves.

I topped every thing off with a nice layer of old mature from the goats barn. I will do those same layers 2 or 3 more times making a large mound.

I'm out of mulch and straw so I need to get that Monday to cover it all up. This 10x10 foot bed will give me lots of great composted soil in the fall. The temp in this mound will reach well over 140 degrees F and create a climate of microorganisms you can't get anyplace else.

I can't wait until it is finished. Onions and garlic will over winter in this bed and should be ready to harvest in June or July of next year. Then I will plant pumpkins and squash. Or sweet potatoes.

End of the week cocktail

Tito's, Ginger Beer and fresh orange.
What should I name it? Nice end to a stressful week.

Humidity

How can the humidity be higher that 100? The thermostat outside only says 80 degrees. The inside is set to 77. Still my windows will not stop fogging, it's wonderfully humid and not raining.

Assasin

This is an awesome looking little insect I found on Augie's water bowl. It's a Wheelbug nymph, so not in its adult form yet. That thing on its face is a dagger. It stabs its prey to death. There is a whole family of insects like this one. It mimics a scorpion in its walk but does not sting. It just impales.

This one was about .75 inches from tip to tip.

Pie plate. Not just for pies

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. Pie plates make the perfect large salad dish.

First raspberry harvest

Might not seem like much but it's still exciting to get berries for the first time. I put this bush in last year so they are not even a year old. I picked my first berries Sunday and about 9 more since.

Because these raspberry bushes bear fruit in old wood I should get many more next year, at least that's the hope.