Category: Garden

Where have they gone?

On By CarynIn Garden
Pepper plant with no peppers

I had about six green bell peppers growing on my pepper plants. I checked them every time I passed going to the chicken coop. I had one starting to turn red, and since I like red peppers better than green, I was hoping they were just not ready yet, and needed some time on the stem. Someone thought they were ready, and took them all. All of them, in one day. We have raccoons, fox, opposum, squirrels, deer, all of which could be capable of carrying out the heist, but I suspect my oldest dog Griffin. He was sniffing around the peppers, and is getting rather stubborn in his old age. I think he is more than capable of consuming six green peppers in a go, and still eat all his dinner. I guess we’ll see if pepper plants pop up in the yard next spring.

Real peaches

On By CarynIn Garden, Wildlife

A friend invited us over to pick peaches! So many peaches! It was our first time picking straight from the trees. The air was full of butterflies. There was even a butterfly ball; a ripe peach completely covered with hungry butterflies. iNaturalist identifies the species as hackberry emperor butterflies, at least the one I took a picture of, separate from its kaleidoscope.

Butterfly ball in a peach tree

After picking the peaches, we brought them home, gave them a wash, and laid them out on paper towels on the counter to dry and finish ripening. To keep the flies off (there always seem to be two in the house), I laid some nylon netting loosely over the top.

Part of our peach harvest covered in netting.

As they ripened, we tried blanching to remove the skins. We weren’t successful with a quick blanch, so kept increasing the boil time. We ended up with cooked peaches, but the skin came off well. We made peach puree by adding lemon juice and sugar and blending it all together. From that we have made peach ice cream and peach smoothies! Yum.

Peppers

On By CarynIn Garden

The peppers seem to be doing well in my garden.

Pepper and basil from the garden

The plant was labeled “sweet pepper” and I was thinking red, yellow, or orange peppers. These are green peppers, which I don’t consider sweet, and don’t particularly care for. Bummer. At least I now know I can grow peppers as well as basil.

There will be kitten pictures tomorrow.

Green

On By CarynIn Garden, Wildlife
Katydid

I like the composition of this photograph. At first there is just a field of green, then the Katydid picked out against the leaves, then the gap in leaves and the insect staring into the beyond, one antennae reaching down into the void. Is it going to jump? (Well, it is a Katydid.) Is it going to jump before I can snap the photo (luckily no).