Staycation. Eggplants, grapes, tomatoes...

The yawning pause here was a very busy week at work followed by our week-long 2009 "Staycation." Highlight: Don Giovanni at the Santa Fe Opera Wednesday night!

6 Bucket Rain on Tuesday 21 July
And finally some more, with lightning and thunder last night, Sunday 26 July. We got lazy and didn't try to fill the few empties (all full of extra ditch water from Saturday's watering), so our de facto rain gauge was out of order. One bucket for sure.

This is a placeholder for yard and garden news:
Lilies are out. Zinnias bloomed this week, in slow motion: adult red, then white, then pink. Amaranth short but with seed heads. Green bean babies!! The tri-color mix of bush beans in the garden now have the tiny curls that will be green beans. Harvested 5 perfect eggplants. Red grapes galore. A single tentative desert primrose (the bush looks healthy and happy). Finches already pecking holes in the apples, and prowling the sunflowers. Bees continuing to wear themselves out hauling over-stuffed thigh pouches of gold sunflower pollen back down the street. Aggressive Mexican Reds (hummingbirds, just passing through) battling our current non-too-mild black-headed guy for the feeder. Very curious to know what we're supposed to do or expect from the sweet potatoes (vines looking quietly happy) or the leeks (think those are still on the small side). Chilis busting out everywhere. Green peppers gaining in size. Oh--harvesting a few pickling cucumbers. Sun chokes are enormous (7'?), but still with no sign of flowering. G. starting to think about fall crops. Garlic? Broccoli? Carrots. Peas. Beets.


Very sad: at some point in the last several weeks, the artichoke dried up and died, as did those darling desert bluebells and a handful of marigolds. Also: suspect that the wilt has ahold of the watermelon vines.