This is a cherry tomato growing in the geranium flower box on the garage window. It's a hearty little thing with several small tomatoes getting ready to go.
This is the volunteer ground cherry that is attempting to take over our flower and vegetable bed in front of the garage. We grew a ground cherry last year and didn't use any of the fruits, mostly because we weren't sure what to do with them. This one popped up on it's own this year and I plan to attempt to make some jam with the fruit.
The hollyhocks finally bloomed. They turned out to be a bit short on variety, but they were loaded with flowers. I'll need to start some other seeds this winter to hopefully get more colors going. Someday, we may have a crop of these things that cover the whole side of the house.
Here's a close up of the red ones.
Here are some update photos of the rogue squash growing in my compost pile. Somewhere under all that vegetation is a small pile of organic matter that should be breaking down and getting ready to provide nutrients to my plants next year.
Instead, it's providing all the nourishment that this seemingly steroid supported squash plant is consuming right now. I have no idea about what condition the compost will be in, but I do know that there are tons of blossoms on this thing. Since this photo was taken, the runners have infiltrated the alley en masse and the small receptacle for dog waste is completely obscured beneath squash fronds that could double as hang-gliders. Wow.
I won't exactly be giving Bayfield a run for its money come next blueberry season, but I did manage to produce three (3) delicious berries this year. Not bad for two whole bushes...
I enjoy making reusable grocery bags. Our current technology is stuck in a lose-lose argument on the answer to the age old question, 'paper or plastic?' Creating new plastic bags is amazingly poisonous to the environment, toxifying hundreds of gallons of water every day, per bag making factory, to make a product that is so difficult to recycle that most centers won't accept them. (Some stores have started a re-use campaign, or provide receptacles to drop off you used bags, which is better than just throwing them in the lake). Paper bags lose much of their strength when they increase the recycled fiber content, so many bags are made with first run wood fibers, meaning new trees were used to make the bags.
In our small house, room for storage is hard to come by. One way we've attempted to combat this is by reducing the amount of junk we own, and that has helped prevent clutter pretty well. Another way is to keep our eyes peeled for better storage systems or other more efficient household items, and one of the best places we've found for this is the Goodwill, followed closely by Craigslist and Freecycle. This little gem was waiting for us at the Goodwill a few weeks ago.
It's in good condition, but desperately needs some minor cleaning, a new coat of paint and possibly some different drawer pulls. We haven't entirely decided on the top surface, but the wood grain Formica is probably on the outs. The drawer slides are severely worn and the floor of the lower storage area is sagging significantly. Once it's all spiffed up, it'll go in the dining room as a sideboard. Stay tuned for project updates!
Toward the end of July Lulu made a pie. The crust is hand made from her grandmother's recipe and we used all fresh fruit, including Michigan cherries procured on her recent trip to see her family and raspberries we had just picked in Bayfield. The pie was fantastic. If you look closely, you can see that I cut out a piece for myself and was ready to dig in before I was reminded to take a picture.
