July Recap and August Anticipation

I'm a few days late in posting my recap for my July garden. My garden has been slow to grow this year compared to last year. Our squash supply seems to have dried up, but we've been collecting a decent amount of cucumbers. The late July heat has kicked the peppers into ripening. We harvested this batch last weekend.

Two of my four sunflower varieties finally bloomed in July, but the blooms only lasted a couple of weeks (teddy bears bloomed mid-July) and coconut ice just last week). The teddy bear (top photo) looks burnt around the edges, thanks to the scorching sun. Bugs seem to have gotten to the coconut ice (bottom), as the petals and leaves have little holes. Sadly, I haven't seen any butterflies or bees around them this year. This truly makes me sad, as sunflowers and bees are one of my favorite garden combos (hence the BumbleLush name and blog picture). 

tomatillo--we can feel the fruit within the husk

tomato harvest August 1

tiny tim tomatoes with eggshells in the soil for added calcium to help prevent blossom end rot

Most of my positive garden thoughts in August are focused on the tomatoes. It seems they've been slow to ripen this year compared to last. We're able to collect a half-pint to a full pint of grapes and early girls every two to three days. That's too slow for me!! The tomatillos seem to be progressing nicely. We can feel the fruit inside the husks. The other tomato plants have fruit ranging in color from red to green.

I love this picture. There's a ripe cluster on the left and a green one on the right. This perfectly captures my hopes for a good tomato harvest in August.

Thunderstorms

Well, these are the hazards of a container garden. We got some much-needed rain last night. Unfortunately it came in the form of a flash thunderstorm that knocked over most of our pots. My Sweet Chocolate and Purple Beauty peppers fell over (top photo) and so did most of my Black Krim tomato and tomatillo pots. We'll need to re-stake the tomatoes, but thankfully we didn't lose too many fruit.

p.s. In the last picture, you can see a Black Krim starting to turn red (lower right corner)!

Post #100: Black, White, and Cute All Over

Bumble Lush has reached its 100th post! Ironically, I will not be marking this happy occasion by talking about vegetables or flowers. Just for today, this will be "Kitten Lush" because I want to introduce my new garden helper, Cleo.

Cleo was one of the five kittens we fostered this summer. They were feral kittens that someone found in his backyard and brought into the shelter when they were about 2 months old. We took them home as fosters a few days later with the assignment of getting them healthy, making sure they gain weight, and getting them used to human contact. They are now 3 months old. We brought Cleo's sister and three brothers back to the shelter last Tuesday so they could go up for adoption. I miss their cute little faces, but I'm very happy that my house now looks and smells back to normal.

For a while, we'd been thinking about getting a second cat to be a playmate for our other cat, Pickles. We decided to adopt Cleo because Pickles seemed to get along with her best out of all the fosterlings. In the last few days they've become good friends and are playing together and grooming each other. It's really very sweet.

She's still too young to go out on the deck with me and Pickles. She's small (almost 3 pounds!) and really fast, and if she decided to run off I know I wouldn't be fast enough to catch her. For now, she'll just have to stay inside learning the bookkeeping and helping take inventory when we pick veggies.

I never considered myself to be cat person until we adopted this little guy last year (from the same animal shelter). He's a good little pet, and he loves coming outside with us and sitting amongst the vegetable pots, watching us work in the garden and staring at the birds and squirrels from the cover of the plants. I hope to have Cleo join him out there soon.

This picture was taken the night we brought the 5 kittens home to start our foster assignment. Cleo is the one on the far left. I went to the shelter yesterday to log some volunteer hours and met a nice couple who was planning on adopting one of the males (not pictured). Here's hoping the others find permanent homes soon!