Sometimes it is hard to find the light in a darkened world. Here's some photos of my garden, after quite a few failures.

It's sunflower season right now. The one in my cover photo is a variety called Velvet Queen.

Under the right sunlight conditions, the petals become stained glass windows welcoming the bees for some fast food at an ultra popular hangout station.

This sunflower variety is called Moonwalker. Another mid-sized sunflower. It grows close to 6 feet in height.

Most of these sunflowers would not even grow until I planted them in late August, because something would always dig up the seed or eat the sprouting tops when they were young. To overcome nature, I had to just keep being persistent and planting more seeds every day or so, every week, until something finally made it past infancy.

When I looked at the lawn and saw these strange scruffy weeds growing, I was confused. That's grass! After an extra long season of summer that is still extending to 80 F degree temperatures, the grass has remained dormant leaving many bare patches in the lawn. We probably have four or five grass varieties in our lawn now.

Hadn't seen one of these fuzzy caterpillars since I was a kid. This one was truckin' along quite fast through the grass, looking for some shade to hide in.

Above are the Roma tomatoes. They made no fruit. At least they look super healthy. They waited all summer to go into a growth spurt. Probably because I left the flowering Brussel Sprouts for too long in the soil, stealing nutrients.

Peas are competing for space among the flowering arugula, vetch, and clover.

Corn growing. People tell me I'm not growing enough hear for them to pollinate the ears, and they would be right. None of the ears thickened up enough to be edible. I'll let them continue to change color for fall, and use them as Halloween door decorations.

The corn on the right are called Kandy Corn, and the leaves take on almost a candy pink color. They are probably called Kandy Corn because they are as small like cute candies. Sweet Corn is the other variety I grow, and it reaches a larger height, but it hasn't made any ears this year.

Flower tobacco is still producing flowers. No wonder nurseries don't sell this plant. There would be no need to keep returning to the nursery to buy annual flowering plants if you just had this one plant growing in your yard. I have been collected hundreds of seeds from the expired flower heads. I love that they keep the aphids away and attract predatory insects.

Looks like some new Brussels Sprouts are growing in the center of my bed. Perfect timing for cold season coming up. These are extremely cold tolerant and will produce edible vegetables in late winter or early spring.

Something in nature is going hog-wild. It must have been eating fermented apples outside, and had a wild party tearing up this flower. I did my best to replant the roots into a new pot with potting soil. Flower buds were starting to form. Previously I had many failed attempts at growing moonflowers, four o'clocks, and morning glories due to this same phenomenon during the summer. A couple survived into maturity.

Again, whatever is tearing up my plants seems to be attracted to the organic fertilizers. Blood meal, fish emulsion and other scented goodies make tasty treats and attract all kinds of fat bugs and worms, which is good eating for many mammals. Whatever destroyed this flower pot also managed to stretch off the wire screen I was using to protect my potted chicory/blue-cornflower, although it left the plant alone thankfully. Some of my bonsai trees got knocked over again too. A bit worrisome.

The radishes, carrots, and lettuce were all very small this year. That means that the soil has not been amended enough to properly supply nutrients to the roots. My pumpkins were equally runty this year, and one of them finally flowered, and now it's looking sick and weak. Other veggies I was growing included turnips, radicchio, onions, and cabbage, but my rodents nemesis dug up the rest of those too. Fortunately, it left the Green Onions, Garlic, Turmeric, and Ginger alone. I also planted hundreds of seeds for anise and black cumin, but almost none of it sprouted, and none of it survived long enough to flower.

Its almost October, and the leaves on most trees have barely started changing. I think I enjoy the fall colors more than the Spring colors, although the first green leaves of Spring usually win me over above all the other competing colors. Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. It's close to the only day of the year that you don't have to follow any family traditions, attend a fancy dinner, or make elaborate plans, because you can let kids do what they want to do to have fun. Even Christmas doesn't allow most kids to enjoy that much freedom to be wild and have fun.

Since I probably won't have many more garden updates this year, I'll probably start posting more photos of Autumn textures in future posts. And of course, I'll be sure to show photos of my bonsai tree collection now that the leaves are changing colors.

Thank you for viewing my photos. Say hello in the comments if you have recovered from the recent hard fork.

Bonsai!

Friday, September 28, 2018

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