What was in the garden last night

Our garden, which is mostly edible plants also attracts a great variety of insects, both during the day and at night. Tomato hornworm caterpillar that’s been parasitized and covered in small coccoons. It’s still alive and munching on tomato leaves. Female Chinese mantis that laid eggs in the kale. This non-native species has apparently fedContinue reading “What was in the garden last night”

Our walk yesterday

Somehow we managed to get out for a nice walk before the storms came yesterday. We always check on the garden before going. That’s when we found a nice insect on the green bean supports. This is a freshly emerged dog-day cicada. These nice insects are annual, unlike many other cicadas. Now it was timeContinue reading “Our walk yesterday”

The garden: part-3

Yesterday we did some canning. Susan made zucchini pickles and I canned pickled jalapeños. This is the result of day-1 canning, plus our first eggplant of the season. SLicing tomatoes and Roma tomatoes waiting for processing into sauce. But the green beans and most of the cherry tomatoes are for eating later. By the way,Continue reading “The garden: part-3”

How does the garden grow?

I think that we’ll be picking romas today. So, I see making tomato sauce in our future. Jalapeños have been making a lot of peppers. Yesterday I make pickled jalapeños, so it looks like we’ll have jalapeños this winter that are from the garden. Some of the figs, not yet ripe. It amazes me thatContinue reading “How does the garden grow?”

Regaining my sanity

Sometimes it takes a long walk to go shopping then stopping at a favorite bakery for a pastry and coffee while listening to the person working there talk about their hard days commuting in the ice and snow to help with your sanity. Yesterday we took the long walk to Knight’s Market, mostly to getContinue reading “Regaining my sanity”