Abundance

 The drought continues. We saw a welcome site on July 12, but it passed through too quickly, leaving us with a scant 0.3” of rain.

Fifth oak in the rain

At that time, the grape jelly was being swarmed with scruffy, damp-looking oriole juveniles. As of this writing, most of them are gone. We see an orchard oriole now and then. They used to move south at the end of June like clockwork. Have they gotten the word about triple-digit heat down there?

Soggy, scruffy juvenile orioles

From the 12^th to the 22^nd, we had not a drop. Saturday night we got half an inch. We didn’t have to water yesterday. Whoop-de-doo.

Many things are starting to ripen, including the tomatoes and cherry tomatoes in the high tunnel,

New Girl tomatoes

Supersweet 100 cherry tomatoes

Zucchini.

Zucchini

And cabbage. It’s early for cabbage. A little tiny bit of me is hoping we don’t get a huge amount of rain all at once, lest these lovely cabbage heads split with the sudden influx of water.

Cabbage

Most excitingly, the high tunnel peaches are getting ripe. Terry found two of them on the ground, bruised from the fall, which prompted us to pick the 18 ripest ones after lunch yesterday. They are beautiful and largely blemish-free, which I find amazing. Yes, they are in the high tunnel, but there’s no shortage of insects in there.

Beautiful, perfect peaches

I harvested a lot of things yesterday. The carrots are big enough to eat. The challenge is to pick them before they get too big, at which point they will be woody, or split, or both. I planted some onion seedlings in bunches in the spring for green onions. In theory, the crowding keeps them from getting big. When I wasn’t looking, though, they got big anyway.

Yesterday's harvest, left to right: 18 peaches, a bunch of pickling cucumbers, 6 standard tomatoes, many overgrown scallions, carrots, 6 zucchini, bunch of cherry tomatoes, one hill of red potatoes, 2 Napa cabbage.

I’m almost to full-blown Putting Up mode. I get a little panicky this time every summer, but what gets done gets done. Terry grilled burgers with foil pack new potatoes and overgrown scallions, zucchini, and jalapeno peppers. Even when I’m overwhelmed, going to the garden to get supplies for supper that day never gets old.

I have a new camera which has a better close-up range than my previous camera. I have been taking too much time playing with it. Here are some early efforts.

A bumblebee with leg baskets full of pollen on a purple coneflower.

Bumblebee on purple coneflower

I have grown purple coneflowers forever, yet this is the first summer that I noticed that the anthers (pollen-producing boy parts) develop in a ring from bottom to top.

Circle of pollen-producing structures (yellow) on purple coneflower

This is a skipper butterfly on beebalm, apparently not realizing that the flower is for bees.

Skipper sipping pollen from beebalm

I had a hard time getting everyone in focus for this one. A spider is wrapping silk around a metallic green sweat bee. A video would have been better, but I’m not there yet.

A spider industriously wraps a sweat bee in silk

I hope that you, too, are enjoying the abundance of the season!