furtive fauna REMINDER + red, green, & brown

 
1. REMEMBER: Last day to turn in furtive fauna shots you've taken is tomorrow (either send me the pic or the link to your posted pic--check the link for details). Oh, heck. Scratch that. YOU HAVE the ENTIRE WEEKEND to paw through and find something. The more the merrier, right? I'll be back in town late Monday, so Tuesday I'll see what you all have come up with.

2. Fall bounty.

red

green

black cat, pink tongue & day's harvest

3. New plot for lettuce, etc.; arming against gophers.

Couldn't find wire cutters, so to add another width of wire, I just folded it over and hung the rest of the role on the stakes. Patience is not always a virtue...

 

brown

Here, most of the dirt is back, and new bag o' composted manure is poised to be added: this is right when I ran out of calories and had to stop. =) MAN those bags are heavy if they've been sitting in the rain--woah!

4. Sprout update: the pak choi cotyledons are up (cute!), I think I saw ONE beet sprout (mind you, this is before the brutal rain and HAIL storm yesterday afternoon), broccoli continues to advance VERY slowly, and so far no clear action in the kale department. Hoping if it clears up a BIT today I can finish the lettuce plot and plant it!

QUESTION TO GARDENERS: So, are beets normally kinda slow to sprout? It's been wet and cool, so that may have affected things, but man, that pak choi POPPED up right away. Eager! =)

5. Soon, I will post more pics from last weekend soon--there's a few more goodies in there, plus a very cool factoid I learned.

6. This weekend we're off to the San Luis Obispo area for a biobabbler family gathering (LOVE my family--SO fun), and there's a parade involved (that we attend, not run). We'll see if we get out into nature avec Nikon. =)

bb

Furtive Fauna Foto deadline, plus quickie harvest shots and low carbon ideas

  
Furtive Fauna Foto Free-For-All
So, we now have a collective Furtive Fauna Foto (or Crypto Photo? Camoflaged Critters?) post coming up, and the due date for submittals is October 8th. Send your links or photos to biobabbler at g mail dot com by then and you will be a player! =)

For those of you who don't know/recall this theme, to which YOU can contribute, it is explained and illustrated here.

It always shocks me when it happens. How did I not see it? It's SO OBvious. In some cases I was close enough to lick the animal, but was totally oblivious.

Anyhow, we have a FEW contributors (Yay!!) and I think I've got at least 3 shots, but the more the merrier, and of COURSE I will give you full credit in whatever G-rated fashion you desire.  =)

Garden update
Random (non-glamorous) shot of SOME of the recent squash pickings (pepo):

I think I may yank the sunburst squash plants pretty soon. Wanting more fall/winter garden real-estate, and the plant is looking pretty tired, but we'll see. I have great difficulty yanking living plants. I swear I can hear them pleading "I just wanna live!" I am also the world's worst plant thinner. Yeesh. Same reason.

Nightshade family goodies: tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and sweet peppers. The jalapenos are ALL flawless, so I'm guessing they have some major protective qualities (mechanical/chemical warfare) protecting them from buggy attack. It's NOT because I've raised them in perfect conditions (note cracked tomatoes...).

Oh, one cool thing; check out the closest, lower left tomato. It stitched up it's potentially cracked skin. It's amazing. Looks like tiny, neat sutures, perfectly perpendicular to the direction of the cut. TOO cool.

These are seeds from my white cosmos. I've been resisting the very strong urge to deadhead the flowers (to get more fresh blooms) so I can get these babies. Seeds for next year! Makes my cheapie and carbon-frugal heart sing. =) I have loads more ripening, so I must continue to resist snapping them off--it's difficult!!

As I've said before, baby steps toward sustainable living. And this is one. =)

OH, and before I forget, ANOTHER carbon-reducer: I heard on an organic gardening show yesterday (You Bet Your Garden) that I can dig up my jalapeno plants, put each in a big pot, and keep them in some sunny, non-freezing place, and the plants can live for years and years. AND, he said they can keep producing up until November!

They just can't take the freezing temps we get here, so if I can possibly figure out a way to protect some southern-exposure window real estate from plant-killing-kitties, I could save my super productive little plants, then, after spring frosts are over, I can chunk them back in the ground, and away they go.

That'd be sweet.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I'll harvest some jalapeno seeds, too. =)

xoxo biobabbler