– Almost Finished –

The garden that is!

It was not a good year for the tomatoes and potatoes.

The damn deer did a number on the lettuce and topped off the green peppers.

Something got to the cabbage plants and destroyed about half of each head. We were able to salvage some of it and the coleslaw was good. The Wife-Unit thinks it was some type of bug. I’m betting on the deer. If it was the deer I hope it gave them a lot of intestinal gas and they floated away

The green peppers came back and we’ve harvested quite a few. We will be getting a few more

Middle son planted three types of hot peppers in the garden, Habanera, Jalapeno and a pepper he doesn’t know the name of. He claims it is super hot. I’ll take his word on that. I have no intention on tasting them. I dislike using a CO2 fire extinguisher instead of paper from a 4.5 inch wide roll. I don’t need my afterburner lit.

Oldest BIL picked up a couple of pepper plants after what had been planted were munched on by the deer. He didn’t know what type of pepper they are. It turns out that they are Tabasco peppers.

We didn’t plant any zucchini this year.

The wife unit decided to plant only butternut and acorn squash.

It looks like it is a good year for squash or at least for the vines.

The vines grew very fast and went through the gate of the fence surrounding the “squash patch”. We can’t open the gate and the patch is as thick as a jungle and vines have extended beyond the fence. Between the leaves we can see several squash but we don’t know how many we can’t see.

HOWEVER!

It turns out that it wasn’t acorn squash that were planted.

Ever hear of Argonaut Squash?

They apparently are a type of butternut squash but much bigger. Results from Google indicate that they can grow to TWENTY-SEVEN inches and between twenty and thirty pounds.

The only one that is exposed enough that I could get photo of is nineteen and a half inches long and still growing.

The wife unit found the blog of some woman that has grown the Argonaut Squash and it was stated that she stores them atop her refrigerator.

Hope they don’t fall off when her hubby tries to get a beer out of the refrigerator. His “obit” will read that he was “squashed by a squash1”

I am not very happy with the Dahlias this year.

I got them in a little late and I wasn’t pleased with the tubers when I was planting them. I think Sam should change suppliers.

I planted them in two locations again this year. One group is planted at the side of the house and the other is next to the vegetable garden.

I guess I’ll toss in a few birds.

A few days ago I am walking to the area of the “Wood Pile” and I meet Middle Son. He told me that he was coming to get me and my camera. He said he was in the cab of the backhoe and he saw a “huge spider” on the end of a log. The spider had moved to another log. It wasn’t quite as large as he described it to be. The abdomen was a little smaller than my thumbnail.

The marking on the abdomen reminds me of the face of an owl.

I take the camera back into the house and I come back out with a couple of bottles of water. Middle son asks me if I heard him scream. I tell him no and ask what happened.

“I picked some wood off the pile and a garter snake goes crawling across my foot and into the weeds. I screamed and jumped like a girl. It scared the crap out of me.”

The sons have stopped accepting any more “wood” until they can split most of what has accumulated. They have a good start on the splitting.