butterfly, dixie speckled peas and bits

a showy visitor outside our door this morning
He showed himself off for Esme and for me for several minutes
The butterfly species is a Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta


not in focus - but it was the only shot I got of the outside of the wings


dixie speckled butterpeas


I pulled a tomato vine out of the lima beans this morning and found three more pods of the speckled butterpeas clinging underneath a leaf. A sweet little joy :)

I have been thinking and reading a lot more on breeding plants lately... there is a lot there I want to delve into. The idea of it taking years and years both satisfies something in me and terrifies it at the same time. The thoughts of trays and trays of yearly seed growing in volume crop after crop - things changing slightly, growing better adapted to our specific land (those things that do not produce do not get saved etc.) ... all of that is tantalizing. The thoughts of sudden loss of an entire crop, compounded time fading away in a single windstorm - it is like a drama spread out painfully slow over the years... to perhaps end in tragedy but still it must be attempted. I read Thomas Jefferson's garden notes a while back, and while it is definitely not the kind of reading most people are into (very few in fact I am sure) I could feel that yearly drama even in between his lines. The things that lived, the things that died, harvest coming to table, the winter, and the spring. I am a gardener down in my bones.

Speaking of reading. I saw someone posting about adults not often reading 'to their potential', and adult reading just dropping off for many as they age. I admit that is true in some regards. I do not read as much as when I was a teenager, or even when I was twentysomething... I read more KINDS of things then, fiction and nonfiction, magazines and newspapers. Now, the fiction stories have to do a lot to capture my interest. I was reading a Jack McClure (character) novel 'Blood Trust' in the airport basically because it was the only feasible out of what was available in the tiny place to buy. It held me here and there - nearly lost me other parts - kept my mind busy when there was not much else to do - and now it sits half-read in my box being overshadowed by a rereading of 'The Resilient Gardener' by Carol Deppe. I remember the gardening author's name - I would have to guess at the other one unless I actually look at it. (Eric von Lustbader). It is a good book - but my thirst for more 'seed knowledge' is deeper. That is how my brain works. I have three 1911-1950 field crop science books up in my Google books. I have another one that is an official textbook I want to order from Amazon... Reading to your potential, level and/or volume, has a lot to do with what you are interested in. I can dive into deep science, chemistry, medicine, physics and LOVE LOVE old books on nearly any science topic. But, a modern thriller loses out to them. We are what we are, and to keep the brain fresh, we must feed it what it craves.

garden note

I did not plant anything today - what restraint ;)  I have winnowed out the sunflower heads from last year, the basil seed and a lot of the broom corn seed.  Just that tiny bit of red broom corn I bought last year has reproduced itself thousandfold.  I have given some away to anyone who wanted some at work - hopefully it will feed other birds this next coming winter.  We have so many new and different birds this year - because of the logging opening up our woods.  There are also quail and turkey I am hearing in the woods, and saw last year.

Work tomorrow, but also more seed preparation for the weekend.  There are still marigold heads and zinnias to strip out and maybe a dozen field corn cobs to strip as well.  The only planted seeds that have a chance of being up this weekend are some of the beans and the radishes.  I will see and report!  I bought a Japanese eggplant that will likely be planted tomorrow.  I have never grown eggplant before, but am willing to try.  They are self-pollinating, like tomatoes, so just one plant should do well.

Also: My sunburn is very itchy!  Tonight after returning home from work - being inside all day long mind you - I am itching up a storm more than 24 hours after having been in the sun.  I have such a weird system.  It is like that with nearly anything heavy I lift as well - 24 hours or so later my muscles are telling me about it... but not before, unless I do something really unwise and then I know it almost immediately.

fall garden notes

The radicchio is also coming up now. That makes for everything planned to come up there is now showing some sign of succeeding. I found about a dozen more dry pinto beans on the vines and put them in the dry storage area. It is amazing what shows up when you just sit there and really look at a plant in the sunlight. I would never have seen those dry pods hanging there if I hadn't really been looking for them. There was even one dry pod underneath the plants in the dirt that stood out just on one edge in the mud - I opened it and found three dry beans inside it that were seed quality. As I was sitting on the ground looking at the lentils sprouting I saw one dry pod hanging off of the otherwise dry and withered sticks of the Provider green beans. The seed was not in excellent condition, ie: not something I would have put in with the 'good' seeds for next year. I found a place to plant it in the fall square and if it grows, it did not go to waste.

The new lima bean pods that came on are filling out slowly. They really needed the hot weather, but there are flowers on the vines and if they produce more it will be welcome.

I'm nearly ready to go up and bring Grandma some of the 'fruit of the labor' of the garden, mixed cowpeas and green bean snaps in a container, as well as some more dry seed and nearly half of the Blue Jade sweet corn seeds we received. She gave us some watermelon seeds :) and the Sandhill catalog. I need to get our order together early next week.


from top to bottom:
Lina Sisco, from seed savers
cranberry type from a soup mix
'Esme' cranberry type grown from a soup mix bean last year

I put these in the fall planting as an experiment, to see if they will produce plants that are more similar than dissimilar. The 'Esme' is planted nearest to the lima trellis. I have a suspicion that they are all just slight variations on the same thing. The dry pinto beans I've been getting from the same plants have about as much variation in them.

I found a dry gourd in the valley and pulled seeds out of it. It was a 'volunteer' growing in the grass from seed we bought several years ago.

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Also, thinking far ahead to a time in the future. Esme would be a little older then, and would be able to take more responsibility and help out on a 'farm' that might have some goats and chickens. Several people at my work keep 'a few' goats and cows on their property. They use a local butcher in Puryear to process the meat at a certain time of the year. We could save corn and grains and pumpkins and other things to feed to a dozen or so chickens, and let the goats graze in the valley and clean up all other leftovers. Grain and forage could be saved and fed to the goats and chickens over the winter. The chickens would produce eggs, and we could mix other vegetables and grain and eggs together to make a supplemental dog food, to reduce but not eliminate how much store bought food we rely on. If the goats were processed at the local butcher we could use the 'excess' in that way, as well. We already get bones and trimmings from the butcher, and give them to the dogs sometimes, when we buy our own food.

We also make a pot of 'glop' once in a while for them now - out of any fat we have leftover from our own meats from the store, a cup of cooked dry beans, and cooked oatmeal or rice and mixtures of leftover veggies. Mark says I should throw a can of tuna in it when I make some today, as we have one nearing it's expiration date on the shelf and fish and/or fish oil is also important in dog food recipes. Even with three times the work to make/keep/store a supplemental food but a third less storebought food it would still be a success. I bet leftovers would freeze for a few days at a time. There is a lot of work to do before the chicken idea would happen - fencing for one. But I count learning how to grow these different grains/plants and getting used to tending, gathering and storing the produce as necessary preparation work.
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A shout-out to three blogs I've been reading lately:
Hard work Homestead
Subsistence Pattern Food Garden
Down on the Allotment (UK)

Not that we will ever go as far as all of these... but I'm learning a lot.
Oh, and the dog glop turned out just fine - I need to use a bigger pot this next time and boil the beans a little longer before I put in the rice.