I hadn’t seen my little tree frogs in my garden this season. I was afraid that since I chose not to grow melons, they left for other places that were more friendly for perching. Turned out they just blend into the basil better.
We have a spider that hangs out on our Hibiscus bush. It is a very welcome spider, and especially welcome to eat the insects that come to eat my flowers. I am pleased with this photo because the backlighting really highlights the spider and the petals.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The peppers seem to be doing well in my 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.
Critters and Craft 