wet and soggy weekend weather; update 7/7/13

despite the rain, the garden did not float away!  actually, it seems to have been just what many of the plants have needed to take off.  suddenly, we are seeing lots of growth and fruit being set.  

 zucchini in the keyhole garden

 eggplant in the keyhole garden-the first fruit is on its way

 in three days, we had 5.5 inches of rain!  

 bumble bee in the mountain mint-this plant is a bee magnet.  we easily can count half a dozen different types of bees on the mountain mint at any given time.

 the logs that form the walls of the herb garden are decomposing rapidly thanks to many different types of mushrooms.

 somewhere in that tangle of tansy and st. john's wort is a walkway.

 believe it or not, that is a three sisters garden and somewhere in there are several stalks of corn.

 the signs of summer:  insects, specifically, a harlequin bug.  needless to say, the cabbages and other brassicas were removed from the square foot garden to prevent more from appearing.

 red noodle beans in the square foot garden

 over in the vertical garden, we have asparagus long beans.  both are tasty and easy to grow.  we have become fans of both types and almost always have a few plants in the garden.

 the garden phlox plants look spectacular this year which is nice after the awful time we had last year.  we had the worst infestation of phlox plant bugs and the plants looked terrible.  thankfully, they seem to have completely recovered and even to have spread a bit.

 one of my personal favorites in the garden; a blackberry lily.  we started out with one little rhiozome in the old perennial garden and they have spread out through the one section of the bed.  the seeds are pretty easy to germinate so it is now wonder how this has happened!

 beautiful day lily-don't you just love the color?

 when you have coneflowers, you have bees.  here are a couple of bumbles gathering nectar

 the grapes in the arbor look a little worse for wear.  they have some sort of fungus but we leave them for the birds who do not seem to mind at all.  four years ago, i gathered a bundle of ripe grapes and created a sourdough starter for bread.  believe it or not, that starter is still going.  that reminds me, i need to think about baking some sourdough bread!

and as always, cake.  this is a maple pecan cake with a cinnamon ribbon.  to see the recipe, visit my blogpage, it is posted there.