Birthday Month

June is birthday month in our families.  Tonight, we celebrated Nanny's birthday with a barbeque supper (with all the trimmings) and homemade strawberry shortcake.   Nanny had kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, nieces, and nephews show up to tell her "Happy Birthday!"  We had a big time.

I walked the garden with my granddaughters to see what was ripe.  We picked a batch of squash and three cucumbers.  We saw a thumb-sized purple eggplant and a bell pepper big enough to use.  Much to my consternation, the little rascals pulled up a couple of little carrots to see what was happening under the ground.  I thumped their heads for it.  ;)

But it was a joy to me to see their excitement.  They said, "Awwwww...!" when I showed them the baby cucumbers with their yellow blooms still attached.  They screamed when they grasped a cucumber to pick it and got poked by the little thorns, but they thought it was cool that the thorns just rubbed right off.  They ran to show the cucumbers to their uncle, who loves cucumbers.  He took out his pocket knife, peeled it, and ate it on the spot. 

The green beans aren't blooming yet, but they've climbed the fence and are reaching for the sky.  The tomato plants look good, but the crop has been disappointing so far.  We've had a lot of rain these past two weeks, and the fruit that was ripening when the rain started turned into yucky water bags.  Seems like I've had this problem before when it rained a lot.  I probably ought to look up tomato diseases.

We've picked a couple of batches of squash from the older plants, and they are loaded with blooms.  The younger batch of plants is growing well, but isn't blooming yet.

Purple hull peas are coming along.  The "skips" that I replanted came up fairly well and are growing. 

Something's eating the okra, but not too badly.  I'm going to leave it be, for now.

I saw a little wad of Japanese beetles on my green beans.  I'm not sure they were interested in eating, as they appeared to be mating.  In any case, I knocked them to the ground and stepped on them.  It was sort of gratifying.