Eating, weeding and raining

It was raining off and on again today, but after a few forecasts lately for rain that never happened, I watered last night when we got home from our weekend vacation.

Then today it did rain. Over a half an inch between watering and raining. Rained a few times. Long north south fronts moving east that didn't last long.

And before noon, the same grand kids were back for more blue berries. This time they didn't bring anything to put stuff in ... so we just stood there and ate for a while. Then I picked some peas and beans. There are still more of those. And also picked our first eggplant and first pepper for them. Plus one onion, I guess I should have asked what they would have been using it for and could have given them more.

I didn't pick anything for us, I will likely do that tomorrow. Peas, beans. My wife will eat the peas but I think she is already tired of beans.

And we have one watermelon so far. I didn't see it there Thursday and today it is 9+ inches long and too big to reach around with two hands.

But no more zucchini yet. Lots of flowers, but not the kind that puts out fruit.

Flowers are finally flowering. Not many, but a few.

Milkweed. I had seen one caterpillar before but I could not find it today. Now I just looked online and the ants that are all over my milkweed like to eat the eggs and small caterpillars. Guess I will work on getting rid of the ants.

... and getting rid of the bunnies. I've seen two in my yard. And today there was one of them in my garden that will run when I get about six feet from it. I had been heading out to weed so I had a garden tool in my hand that I started throwing at it. It didn't make it move any faster, finally chased it into the neighbors fenced garden. :) But they don't have a garden this year so the gate is open. (Suppose I could have let them know so they could bring out their dogs?)

Corn. Almost all of the plantings are tasseling. The earliest planting has silks but not quite ready yet. Just checked, the 2nd planting should be ready today. I'm guessing three or four plantings will be ready in a couple of weeks ... when we are back on the road.

I did spend some more time today weeding. Weeding mostly the strawberries. It is much easier to weed when the weeds are small. I hadn't weeded this before so some of the grass is over knee high and the roots are well anchored.

The strawberries I planted this year had some fruit on them a few weeks ago before the older plants. Now I see that this years planting is putting out more berries. These aren't ever bearing so I'm guessing it is a one time thing. I see that one of the plants did die but most all the other plants are busy putting out shoots so I am just trying to train them to stay between the paths.

When the kids were here we also looked for raspberries. We found and ate a few, but most of the ones we did find were the size of wild ones, almost round they were so small. And some were rotting on the stem while some were ready and others still green. I thought they usually got ripe closer to the same time.

I never did see them, but my wife found some ripe tomatoes and ate them right away :) We will have more, but I guess the 1st ones are the best.

I don't think we could find a banana pepper this year. My wife liked those because when she cooked with those they would 'disappear' into the food for those people who like to pick things out of their food. The first pepper ready was a Gypsy pepper. The others are different colors of bell peppers. The only one I noticed today was about the size of a ping pong ball.

When I was looking up which peppers I had panted I found info about the watermelon. It isn't supposed to be ready until Aug 16. Over a month from now. And the info with the plant didn't say how big, just 'extra large.'