Another Sweaty Day But A Good Day

I had a really good day today.  (I can say that now after the sweat has stopped running toward the floor from all parts of my body.  TMI?)  Yep, I was out in the garden for much of the day, but got bunches crossed off my To Do List.

My zucchini plants (both of them) have stopped producing.  Just plain stopped.  And the leaves haven't been looking too good either.  Nope, no evidence of insect damage.  I thought all squash liked hot weather as we've been having so what's the problem?  I gave the plants some attention, a trim removing yellowed leaves and a chirky pep talk.  We'll see if that does any good.

Staked up a couple of (still headless) broccoli plants that were beginning to lean.  Since they prefer cool weather -- of which we've been having none -- that may be the problem.

Pulled out my green and yellow bush bean plants.  Harvested the last of what I wanted yesterday and now I have plenty in the freezer for our year's supply.  Threw half of the plants into the poultry yard, and saved the rest for our daughter to take home to her chickens.

I had planted a couple hills of "assorted gourds" that I thought would be nice to have for fall decorating.  These tiny white pumpkin-like things are the only "assorted gourds" that are growing.  If I remember, the same thing happened last year . . . and I used the same packet of seeds this year.  (I expected a different outcome?)

Pulled the last of the Sweet Pea vines that died on me prematurely.  Better luck next year, eh?

Staked up an apple tree branch that was hanging mighty low because of all the apples on it.  Not a bad problem to have.  We even "thinned" the apples when they started to form earlier this season.  Can't complain about the apples not developing well this year, can we?

Weeded the little 10' x 16' plot in which we've got our experimental dwarf apple trees planted.  How do weeds come up so easily through a thick mulch on the ground?  Not fair, I say, just not fair. 

Dead headed the bachelor buttons, marigolds, cosmos and zinnias.  Don't know if they feel better, but they sure look better.

When our strawberries are done bearing, we always mow them down with the lawn mower so they can make a burst of new growth before going into dormant winter time.  We did this a couple of weeks ago and they've made a lot of regrowth in just that time.  The weeds that had popped up in the patch were quite impressive, too.  So I attacked them this morning and now the area is looking good again.

You may not be able to tell it from this picture with nothing to compare the size of them to, but it looks as though our onions are going to be of a right good size this year.  This is one of the three beds of them.

This is a couple of my fall planted cauliflowers.  The plants are all of about 3" tall.  I keep thinking maybe they'll really take off . . . one of these days.  (Go, little plants, go!  You can do it!)

And here's the bed of fall planted greens:  lettuce, spinach, mizuna mustard, arugula and Swiss chard.  I've had it covered with a frame of shade cloth in this continuing hot weather.   (Does the terrible angle of this picture make you dizzy like it does me?)

I made two more jars of my Minnesota Kimchi.  They're now doing their thing on the counter for a few days.  We've already gone through a first jar, have another in the fridge and now have these two more coming along.

The one thing still remaining on my list is harvesting the ripe blueberries which could have been done today.  My rationale is that I had to save something to do tomorrow, right?