Tagged summer
Runaway Pumpkins
After growing pumpkins in Pennsylvania, things don’t feel quite like home without a big, sprawling, crazy pumpkin patch in the front yard.
These sugar pies are giving a much stronger showing this year (as are all the vegetables), and I hope to be making fresh pumpkin pies as early as October.
As of last week, the plants have cleared the fence. They use their tendrils to walk wherever they want. The faster they grow, the faster they grow.
Did you know that you can actually hear pumpkins laughing?
The ring of fence you see in the foreground is the perimeter for a new garden bed I’m working on. Dogs out, compost in. The pumpkins are eager pioneers.
Squash blossoms are stunning. They open with the rising sun. Got any yummy squash blossom recipes to share? Tell us in the comments.
For every pumpkin I find, there are probably three more I cannot see. Got a guess for how many pumpkins I’ll have by October 31st?
They’re heading for the forest now… In fact, I hear that pumpkins like to grow in trees.
Waist-High Corn and Basket O’ Zucchini
The garden is one of my primary occupations this month. Here’s a peek – there’s more to share.
Poetry is also on my desk this July. Today I finished my submission (poetry with narrative movement) for The Clarity of Night “Uncovered” Short Fiction contest featuring Stephen Parrish author of THE TAVERNIER STONES. Some time over the next couple days I’ll create an audio recording to share here with text at Brainripples (I’m really liking the audio poetry experiments).
There’s still time for you to write, submit, read, and mingle – hop over and enjoy the first 15 finalists! (Hint: you don’t have to be a finalist to benefit from one of Jason Evans’ interactive short fiction contests.) And as if this all weren’t enough, Jason, JR Tomlinson, and Aine have prepared An Extra Bonus!
UPDATE: You can read my entry Forties Club Finalist #22 here.
Christmas Not-a-Spruce Tree and Summer Solstice Foxglove
NOTICE: Correction to the true identity of this tree forthcoming!
This Christmas tree was planted about ten years ago, an evergreen (not a spruce) tree Colorado Blue Spruce (Picea pungens) which surprised us in 2009 with flowers, and in 2010 with its first cones (which I’m pretty sure turn red-purple as they mature).
Like the native evergreens, this tree is slowly and steadily emerging from the protective understory of Red alders. I’ve seen this tree provide a home for spiders, caterpillars, tree frogs, and birds, but one never knows what’s hiding in this shady corner of the yard.
The adjacent foxglove (Digitalis) are coincidentally in their first year of flowering. These plants have been working up the gumption to blossom for at least four years, possibly longer, and shine in late sunlight with purple, pink, and white.
Now is the time for seeds to quietly form and ripen for the autumn.