other peoples' gardens...

We had a nice time last night, in spite of the dire end of the world predictions.  We headed to "the other side" of the water for a get together with some other gardeners from our meetup.com group.  It's so nice having some face to face social conversation and shared interests in this age where people sometimes only "meet" on Facebook!  The drive was lovely,  couldn't have asked for better weather, it was about 80,no humidity & sunny.

heheehee, the bridge tunnel under the Chesapeake Bay struck me as funny today, since where else would you want to be during a world wide earthquake prediction, LOL....

headed under...

I was trying not to look at the clock reading near 6 pm and start laughing...

Finn getting excited about???

The folks headed the other way, not so lucky, the traffic headed south was at the usual standstill, and I might add had completely cleared up by the time we headed back later in the evening.

Then it was time to relax!  M's house sits right on a nice salt marsh type environment, very peaceful, yet right in the city.  Here's part of our group below:

They had set out supplies to make rain barrels and were ready to provide instruction, they have several already in use, 5 or 6 I think!

The food that shows up is always fresh and yummy from the garden, with the usual random bag of excess produce to pawn off on someone, - wait until zucchini season!

I love, LOVE just seeing and being able to walk through others' gardens.  I think it's the gardener's equivalent of rifling through someone's medicine chest :)  There is always something new to learn, a new way of trellising, new varieties, etc.  It's amazing also to see how certain things grow differently.  We are only about 35-40 mins apart yet she has things flourishing that I don't have success with, and vice versa.

I thought this was really cool... 

I have never seen a carrot flower!  She is planning on saving seed so this was a rare opportunity to see it up close.

M is also the only person I know personally that is actually doing it - gardening in her front yard in the city!  It looks fantastic, and I bet she gets lots of people that slow down to look on their evening walks, I know I would!  Heck, I'd probably knock on the door and introduce myself if I didn't know them already - gardeners are usually a pretty friendly sort and I don't think they would shoo me off :)  !

After good conversation, good weather, good food and a garden tour, I came home refreshed and woke up at 5:45 am today to tackle the peas, over 3 lbs today, but I think it's about over, I didn't notice any new blossoms and temps should hit 90 by midweek.

  

Then my garden laughed at me and my renewed vigor and said -

 "oh, yeah?"  Well..."just look at this!  Let's see how tough you are now!"

(enlarge for full on aphid action depicting all life stages LOL...)

I'm guessing the below is a whitefly?  That's a new one here.

Time for the kids to mix up some Dr. Bronners soap in their Super Soakers!  Let the games begin...

*note to any local readers I might have:  our group would love to have you join us!  There are plenty of online q&a forums, but if you have a desire to meet up with other gardeners face to face for learning or social time, check us out!  There is a link at the very bottom of my right hand sidebar that will take you to our site.

It's Closing Time...

... you don't have to go home, but you CAN'T. STAY. HERE!

Round 1 Eliminations were held last night, first to leave are the cucumbers covered with bugs!

They are horribly covered in squash bugs of all life stages...

This is the first bit of space created for the fall garden... what you can't see is the hundreds of squash bugs running for the hills!

I splurged and paid $8.99 for a large bottle of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap to make my own insecticidal soap. I had been balking at the price but you only need 2 tbsp to make a quart! The level in the bottle has barely moved after making 2 quarts! Plus this stuff can be used for all sorts of things around the home.

And it WORKS!

Stopped the squash bug in his tracks! Why did I wait soooo long to do this?

Unexpected Bonuses:

1. The peppermint smell will act as a bit of a deterrent if used in the early stages of the garden before they have established their stronghold (too late for me)!

B. If you are bored, the label on the soap bottle makes for fun reading!

Excuse the obscene abbreviation, but WTF? These are my yard-long beans! Luckily I only found one like this.

Check out the critter party aftermath on the J. Gyllenhaal!

I admit defeat at this point.

Here is today's harvest. Romas are rolling in now, but were crawling with squash bug nymphs and have BER. I've been sowing beans all through the heat of summer and basically been wasting my seeds until now. They are finally starting to come in again. Yellow Wax are looking to be winners again and new for me is Contender green bush bean which has just started to trickle in but are nice looking. I gave the Dragon's Tongue another go but sadly this variety will not be reappearing in my garden. I was hoping for a different outcome in the summer vs. spring, but they look even worse. They are colored beautifully when about an inch long, but lose their luster within a day and leaving them longer doesn't help. Not suited as well for my area I guess, although I will say the ones harvested in May were better, but not as good as the other varieties.

A few good things...

love, love, love yard-long beans! I love walking through them growing on the arch in the garden, love the blooms, love the way they taste, love the way they look in my wok, the love is rivaling my Subaru Love, and that's a good thing...

Then came school shopping for the kids...

don't take a sip of that coffee because you will probably snort it out...

HA!

While wandering around T.J. Maxx I put these on and my kids were horrified!

Finnegan: "mommy, take them off before you fall down!"

Lochlann: "you don't look like you would be a very good mom in those"...

Note in the above photo how there is about 2 inches between the top of the shoe and my knee, these would be good for gals who are like 6'2 !

OK, I don't want to offend any of you who "this is your thang"- but I will go ahead anyways - I'm a Birkenstock/Teva/Flippy-Floppy Gal, and these are utterly ridiculous! So hey, if you are in the "middle-age tween crowd" (heard that term today!) puh-leeze don't wear these, you look unstable, both mentally and physically LOL!

... but I'm thinking they might be good squash bug squishing shoes! Maybe hang them like a windchime to serve as a warning to insect evildoers?

Wait til my kids are about 14, they probably won't go anywhere with me!

Thunderstorms all day for next 2-3 days, so I think the garden will be done for by this weekend and it will be time for Round 2 Eliminations... I'm thinking it will definitely involve tomatoes.