The First Blueberries of the Season!

                                      Fresh picked today!

Autumn Monarch Butterfly

It was a surprise to see a monarch butterfly in the garden today, October 22nd!  

A large female was nectaring on a small blossom of a butterfly bush about 4:20 p.m.  The temperature was 72 degrees, sunny with a light breeze, unusual for upstate New York this time of the year.  We call it Indian Summer, a short warm spell after cold Fall weather.  The weather will be back to normal in a week.

This is the time of year that monarchs head to Mexico, so she'd better get going!

Fig Crop

 

Three years ago I purchased a Brown Turkey variety fig tree through the mail.  This year I got a nice main crop of figs, the largest weighing in at 92 grams!

Small main crop figs

Three year old fig tree planted in half barrel

This is when I first bought it 3 years ago.

I have a recipe for a Fig and Honey Galette, a French pastry with honey-sweetened mascarpone cheese as a creamy base for the fresh figs.

July Vegetable Beds

Even though our summer, so far, has been dry and not too warm, the raised beds are doing well.

We have garlic, lettuce and onions in bed #1,

beets and bell peppers in #2,

zucchini and yellow pole beans in #3, and

Tomatoes and one potato plant in #4.

The zucchinis are the best crop, with yellow beans just beginning to mature.  The lettuce is going to seed at this point.

Our rabbit friends have enjoyed the beet greens.

Onions are beginning to form bulbs.

We're having a problem with Japanese beetles on the yellow beans.

First Day of Summer

Today's the first day of summer.  The new raised beds are working well for me.  Weeding and cultivating are easy chores now.

The 3-year old Brown Turkey fig tree has survived its winter stay in our attached garage and has one pear-sized fig that should ripen in a couple weeks.  The tree produces two crops, with the second ripening in about September. As soon as the weather improved with no frost expected (around May 15th), we transplanted it into a large half barrel and moved it from the garage to a sunny spot in the vegetable garden.  We're hoping to get more than one fig for our second crop! 😂

Brown Turkey Fig

Brown Turkey Fig next to Rhubarb

Herbs are conveniently located on the porch near the kitchen door.  This  year I've planted parsley, rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme.  A few milkweed seedlings have emerged from the seeds released from the pods of the plant that was growing in the herb garden last year!  Maybe the monarchs will find the seedlings and lay some eggs.

Herbs

The grapevines are gradually finding their way to the arbor.

Concord Grapes

  

 

First Oriole of the Year

 We spotted our first oriole of the year on Mother's Day, May 8th.  It was a few days later than usual.  The feeder contained syrup, grape jelly and oranges.

Spring's Here!

Daffodils -- a sure sign of Spring in the garden!  Hyacinths are beginning to sprout, too!

Amaryllis

 

I purchased a few bulbs from an online gardening site to grow indoors.

These beautiful amaryllis began flowering the week before Christmas.  The red with white throats are named "Barbados" and the white flowers with red edging are named "Picasso."

The largest Barbados measured 8" across!

I'm going to attempt to follow the instructions for re-blooming next year.

Concord Grape Crop

We have 3 vines of Concord grapes that make up our "vineyard."  Small as that may be, we were able to squeeze out about 4 quarts of juice, most of which we canned to enjoy later. 

grape juice

Concord grapes trained over an arbor

 

Peaches!

Our four year old peach tree is producing lots of fruit.  The variety is Reliance, which is a good variety to withstand northern winters. The peaches are sweet and juicy.  We don't use any pesticides at all and this year's crop is beautiful.

Bees, Birds & Butterflies

 Today is a beautiful, sunny, breezy day -- perfect for watching and photographing birds, bees and butterflies.

Ruby Throated (female) hummingbird on climbing honeysuckle

Monarch and bee on side-by-side zinnias

Monarch caterpiller

Sunflower with bumblebee

Male monarch nectaring on zinnia

Female monarch on lantana 

Egg laid by female monarch (above) on swamp milkweed (asclepias incarnata)

Yay! Summer is Here!

 

A view of the vegetable garden from the grape arbor entrance

Beets

Butterhead lettuce with peas in the background being nibbled away by a chipmunk, I think

barrel of sunflowers

Tomatoes have reached the top of their cages

Grape vines being trained over the arbor

We're into Summer now. The Spring season has been great for the garden this year. Flowers and vegetables are thriving. The fruit trees are loaded with baby fruits and the berry bushes have already begun producing raspberries. We've had some good rains, so weeding is a breeze! Also, today a monarch butterfly laid 19 eggs on the common and swamp milkweed. I've gathered the leaves on which the eggs were laid and will let them hatch indoors to protect them from preditors. After they become second stage cats, I'll move them to the milkweed plants in the nursery enclosure to fully develop into adult monarchs ... egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. They'll then be released from the enclosure to continue the cycle.

Strawberry Season

This is our first picking of strawberries.  The strawberry trug is located behind the shed where it gets plenty of sunshine.  This is an everbearing variety called "Tribute".

The Perennial Path at Dusk

This is the entrance to the path just before sunset. We added lighting to the path last year.

Early Bloomers

Our spring weather has been so beautiful this year that we have early bloomers in the garden.  The apple tree, given to me by my dad as a sappling 35 years ago, is full of blossoms. The little grape vine area next to the shed has been trimmed and is budding.

 

Apple tree in full bloom

This is the second year for the strawberry plants in the trug behind the shed.  

Strawberry plants

The lilac tree in the perennial path smells wonderful as we walk by!

Lilac

We've found that the secret to a large crop of rhubarb is adding plenty of composted manure in the spring!  This planting has been in the garden for many years.

Rhubarb

Forget Me Nots seed down each year, so we always have mounds of blue and pink flowers scattered throughout the garden in early spring.

Forget Me Nots

The red azalea adds bold color to the garden and is surrounded with blue forget me nots and white azaleas behind it.  Red, white and blue!  Our patriotic area!

Azalea

The rhododendrun is in full bloom at the front entrance.

Rhody

We installed two oriole feeders on April 28th and received our first visitor May 2nd.

Baltimore Oriole