Negligence

Sorry, bloggettes, to have neglected you this week. I would like to say that I've been too busy gardening to write about gardening, but that would not be entirely true. The hurricanes have sent some rain our way for the past couple of weeks, keeping the ground too wet to work. I have been spending my time reading and cooking and otherwise piddling around the house. The grass in the garden is celebrating both the rain and my absence.

Since my last post, I've canned 17 quarts of green beans, and Nanny has canned five or six quarts. There's probably another pickin' on the vines right now, but it won't yield much more than a family dinner's worth. Fortunately, the new green beans are coming right along. Runners are about a foot long, and twisting around one another in the air above the plants. They need staking. Last weekend, I managed to hammer some metal fence posts in the ground between the rows while the ground was still wet. As soon as it dries up a bit more, I'll string some wire between the posts, and lace bamboo canes through it for the beans to run on (assuming my husband cuts me some bamboo canes, as he has said he would).

The billiard-ball squash I planted around the 4th of July are cranking out squash like crazy. The package said that the fruit matures fast, and it was not kidding. Today's golf-ball-sized squash is tomorrow's tennis ball. Seriously. Much of it gets too big before I get a chance to pick it. It's good squash, though. I've baked it, sauteed it, fried it, and eaten it raw. Its taste and texture is about like regular yellow squash, perhaps with less of that slightly-bitter aftertaste that some squash has. It may get the lion's share of the squash row next year. When I was patroling the edges of the garden earlier in the week, I saw that the squash and pumpkin bugs were having a street fair on the squash and pumpkin leaves. I dusted them with Sevin and did not feel the least bit criminal for doing it.

The pepper plants are showing off. I picked most of them clean two weeks ago, but left the pods to turn red on one or two plants. I've not had much luck with bell pepper in previous years, but this year's crop has been impressive enough to break a few limbs off the plants. I should dig around in the dirt around those plants to find the plastic nursery stakes that came with them so I can get the same kind next year.



In the yard, the sweet autumn clematis is doing its thing. I planted it to grow on a fence, the one I installed to hide all the yard junk. Once I actually got all the junk moved behind the fence, the clematis broke the fence down, so now we have a spectacular view of all the yard junk, together in one place.








The clematis' original home was on a different fence. When I tore the fence down, I dug up the clematis, but, evidently, I left leaving a little piece of the vine in the old location. That little piece took a shine to a Crape Myrtle bush at the corner of my patio. I think I'll let it stay. ;)