corgi cuddles and pumpkin huddles

 It's pumpkin time!

The second haul from the garden is a lot more impressive than the first.  Because I got my vines in the ground so late, this is only a fraction of what we'll be seeing in a few weeks!  With the forgiving weather, there are still plenty of pollinators for the floppy yellow flowers that will soon become pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, and colors.  A cursory check of a random blossom showed plenty of competition for the pollen:  one bumblebee and seven spotted cucumber beetles!

There are still plenty of butterflies, too!

The weather has been amazing.  Warm days and cool nights make a beautiful morning haze over the water.

Around here, the trees are starting to take on a bit more color.

Fall is the best time for mushrooms!

Both the yellow and red mushrooms are some sort of Amanita variety, common here and very toxic.  The blue Lacatarius Indigo is edible, but I would never trust my identification enough to consume any mushroom!  Fall rains and cooling temperatures awaken the underground fungal threads, which start sending up mushrooms.  They reproduce via the spores stored beneath their caps.  Some have "gills," like you can see in this photo from 2018:

Many of the ones I've been finding around here have pores instead, which are a series of narrow tubes through which the spores fall.  Both are so pretty!

It's warm and pleasant, but the muskrats are still hard at work, getting ready for winter.  They've built a second, even larger home behind the first one!

Claudia is, ahem, storing up energy for the long winter ahead.

Tabitha seems to be following her example...

...and Borga is staying extra close to her source of warmth!  ;)

They must know something that I don't know, because I'm still throwing open the windows and letting in the wonderful fresh air.

Have a great week!  

a barn yarn

A month or so ago, my need for a potting space and Todd's need for more storage merged into a concrete plan - we needed to build an addition onto our barn.

The supply truck rolled in last week...

...and now we're really moving forward!

It's not going to be huge, but it will be large enough to give us some breathing room in the main room, AND large enough for shelving, tables, and storage, all devoted to next year's garden.  Hooray!  Hopefully it will be done within 2 weeks.

We are frequently checking on the progress with our special inspector!

Thankfully, after two weeks of miserable hot, dry weather, we've had a torrential rain and a slight cooling-off period.  It's still 6 weeks until September, so I'm happy for any reprieve from the part of summer that I most dislike.  I've been able to work outside a bit.  So many pollinators!  It makes me happy that despite my garden being a total flop this year (front is too overcrowded and can't be corrected until fall, and you know the story with the back garden), it still provides a benefit to bees.

All sorts of little flies rest on the flower heads...

...and I love the tiny worms I sometimes find!  Is it just me, or does this inchworm (family Geometer) have a tiny line of hearts on his back?

The recent rain was so heavy that it broke the stems on some of my tall flowers, but I was able to make bouquets.

Yesterday, I staked the other tall flowers that had been flattened, but not broken, by the rain, and was able to take some quick photos to determine what exactly I had, and how I was going to fix my mess.

Gulp.

Lupine and baptisia are too difficult to move, but I could dig out the culver's root...heavily prune the baptisia...remove the winding trail of german chamomile and cosmos (that are smothered by everything else anyway)...relocate the clematis (on the wooden trellis) and the betony (totally smothered)...dig out every last cleome seedling...for starters.  I could preemptively stake the yarrow and coneflowers.  The coneflowers, especially, are four feet tall and sprawling everywhere, all over. Also, I've got a ton of pink obedient plant interspersed here that's been growing nicely all year, but not a single bud yet.  It must be a late bloomer.  Odd, because my white obedient plant in Indianapolis bloomed early and lasted all summer.   I'll wait and see if it's worth its space here in the front garden.

Here it is from the other side.  Double gulp.

At least I've got good company in Claudia.  My other cats are otherwise occupied.

Have a great week!