Eating is pretty good in the garden.

The pear tomatoes are ripening fast!

The cucumber harvest hasn’t been as good as last year, but it is starting to pick up.

The Lemon Cucumbers look especially peculiar when they grow. I probably won’t grow them next year – they are small and a pain to peel (Dave prefers peeled cucumbers). But they’ve been fun for something different.

Speaking of different… we’ve ot some cool small gourds growing. They aren’t edible but they are pretty!

I cut up the first ripe Sugar Baby! It was the biggest of the bunch, and you can see my hand there for comparison! Dave declared “It tastes like watermelon”, though he requested I try a seedless version next year. We still have three more on the vine, so he’ll have to deal with the seeds for now.

And last – we enjoyed a nice beef stew this week… with Potatoes, Carrots and Shallots from my very own garden!

The horrible heat and humidity went away, we got some rain and…

The roses are loving it. They’ve also had a hard time thanks to the Japanese Beetles which have been horrible this year… but those are now tapering off too. Hopefully the rest of the season will see them thrive.

The first year here, our neighbour had some Morning Glories growing up the fence. They haven’t had them since, but they still pop up in my garden every year! I love them! And I love how their centres glow when you take a picture of them,

The sunflowers are still looking amazing.

As are the zinnias

I will plant zinnia seeds every year from now.

The Cosmos have been a little slower to take off but I thin kit’s going to be a good show now that we’ve had a decent rain.

There may be a touch of fall in there, but there’s still lots to come from the garden

I’m afraid we had a bit of a casualty in the catio the other night…

I was working away in the office, and Dave came up to tell me Lemmy got a Bluejay. He’d come out to find Lemmy throwing the carcass around the catio yard. He took care of the body, but there were still feather everywhere.

I cleaned up the remaining carnage and came in to check the security cameras to see exactly what happened…. the Blue Jays are usually smart enough to stay out of the catio.

And it turns out, Lemmy is not the murderer… he’s guilty of being an accessory after the fact, and committing indignities to a body… but…

I’m afraid it was Mr. MurderPuff who did the dastardly deed. And clearly has no remorse!

I do want to get back to working on my cable socks… but the single Sanderson anklet I knit up over an evening of angry security footage watching has been sitting on my office desk staring at me.

I decided it wouldn’t take too long to knit up it’s mate and get back to the cable sock after…

I’m about three quarters of the way through it! Can I finish before the weekend? Should we take bets???

I know I’ve inundated you with butterfly pics lately, but don’t worry – my little furry friends are still getting love and peanuts daily!

We’ve got a couple of young guys (born this spring) and they are very brave. They have no problem hanging out in the yard with me while I’m working away.

They are very pretty sleek little things.

They love the lattice topper the boys put on the fence – gives them a nice easy runway around the yard…

And easy access into the safety of the trees!

I made a little progress on my spooky sampler this weekend. Mr. Owl got completed as did another wee mouse. Cross stitching certainly goes slower than embroidery, but I’m enjoying being back to it. I am definitely loving the one colour – though I will add in the orange before I move onto the next section. I hope that will be this weekend, but as ever, I make no promises!

I have two quilts on my to-make list for Christmas. And ideally, I’d like to have them complete by the end of October to give me time to get to Mom’s and get them quilted.

This weekend was hot and gross again, so I decided Saturday was the perfect day to stay in and get one started. The first one I wanted to make is intended to be a summer beach/picnic quilt.

I had a layer cake of the fun, summery prints, so I started cutting up some matching solid black 10 inch squares to bang out a pile of HSTs. It went really fast, and I had them sewn, trimmed and laid out on the design bed in just a couple of hours.

Because they were big blocks, and a simple layout – I had them all sewn together with a border in just a couple more hours.

The finished size is 56″ x 65″ – perfect for spreading on the ground at a beach or in the park. I have to dig into the stash to see what I have for a back for it. I may have to buy something but we’ll see. Either way, I’m happy to have this one ready to quilt – it will be knocked off the to-do list in no time!

Because I’m not….

It’s been an amazing summer for butterflies this year. I try to get out a couple times a day with the camera. I spend maybe 20 minutes at a time, and usually come in with multple pics of at least 5 types of butterflies.

These little Northern Crescents have been amazingly abundant this year. They are EVERYwhere.

They are almost as abundant as the White Cabbage Butterflies.

At any given time, I’d say there are 10-15 White Cabbages flitting about the yard.

While I’ve seen fewer monarch caterpillars than last year, there’s definitely more monarchs

This is the first time I’ve been able to capture a pair mating!

We’ve had quite a few Emperor butterflies… this one could be a Hackberry or a Tawny – but I can’t tell unless he opens his wings (Hackberries are orange, while tawnies are beige)

The Red Spotted Purples really love the Black Knight Butterfly bush.

But the White Profusion bush will do too!

These little Skippers are all over the place too! I’ve learned that their host plant it grass (just about any type of grass apparently) – so it’s no surprise to find them in a backyard!

And of course, the Clearwing Moths always delight me!

I mean… how could they not???

I’ve been harvesting more carrots. Half this bunch was cooked up with some bbq pork chops and the other half was eaten raw by Dave (his favourite way to eat carrots). I do have to be careful when I harvest them though…

We’ve got a new bunch of swallowtail caterpillars munching away on the greens.

I am excited to finally announce, there WILL be pumpkins!!! They are still very small, but it’s nice to see them at all.

Something weird is going on in my cucumber patch – I got several of these odd cucumbers from one vine. I did get three normal-looking, normal-sized cucumbers too (I just forgot to take a picture).

My beans are actually starting to look a little better – and I’ve even got three beans so far!

The Yellow pear tomatoes are finally ripening and they do look pretty good if I do say so myself! And I’m especially pleased as I’ve finally successfully grown a tomato plant from seed!

And the autumn crop of raspberries aren’t far off! I still have a pile of the earlier ones in the freezer waiting to be made into jam!

It’s so nice to see things doing so well in the garden!

Furby continues his mission to supervise everything that goes on in my garden.