Eggplant Sighted in Garden

With all the rain (FIVE inches last week!!  Well, at least according to our rain gauge) the garden is getting jungley.   I don't think I will bother companion planting flowers with the melons next year - the pretty cactus rose zinnias look like they're drowning in melon vines.  The melons didn't trellis like the cucumbers, but I think I missed a critical trellising point with them when I should have encouraged them more.

The cucumbers had no problem grasping trellising (sorry, awful pun).  I love this little vine with an anthropomorphic look.

The eggplants, sweet peppers and tomatoes are beginning - just as the powdery mildew is beginning to get the summer squash.  It's just been SO wet.  I hardly even can get out there between thunder storms.

The echinacea that I had started last spring from seed is blooming this year.  It makes me wish I had a perennial herb garden for this and the yarrow and mint and rosemary and other things, too, of course.

The tithonia is blooming.  My parents always grew it in their little garden when we lived in Diamond Village student housing, and I remember the stray cats that lived behind the dumpsters always liked having kittens in the tithonia patch.  I've never grown it myself before, but I believe it will always from now on have a spot in the butterfly garden in front of the vegetable garden.  The butterflies were literally fighting over it the other day during a brief sunny spell.

 

The army worms have descended on my garden again - only on the tomatoes this year.  I think they were planted too closely, because they like hiding in the deep foliage.  They go and eat the tomatoes just as they start to ripen and make them rot, so this year I have decided to pick the tomatoes green and let them ripen on the table, just so I get some.  Not exactly home-grown, vine ripened tomatoes, but it's the only way we'll get any.

Well, there are a LOT of green tomatoes.  It was more than the baskets could handle, and the real estate on the kitchen table is getting scarce, but there's talk of putting the leaf in to lay them out to ripen.  I think we'll have some fried green tomatoes for breakfast this morning.

The rain is very good for the wild mushrooms!  We've gotten tons of Lactarius and chanterelles, as well as some from our shitake stump in the front yard.  The blueberries are still coming in.  I am picking a whole pailful about every three days.  I also did a little herb harvesting, and brought some catnip back to dry inside.  The black cherries by the outdoor sink are fruiting.  They taste horrible (Ethan did a mime impression of how they taste for Rose - washing his mouth out with the hose).  They do have that strongly medicinal taste, though.  We had so much yucky coughing this past winter, I am picking them and making a tincture for a cough syrup.