While the gardener is away, the kids will play.
What they were SUPPOSED to be doing was creating a bed edge using some chalky limestone pieces and digging a hole.
Instead, what I came home to find was this:
And this chalk-covered creature:
And about — no lie — 80 other pictures of an action-sequence of Zombie Boy, or whatever they were calling this character. I’m just glad they couldn’t find the video camera.
And no, I still don’t have a garden bed edge or new hole dug.
The formal corn wears tassels and silk
to an elegant affair. Would you care to have this dance? A pollination waltz, perhaps?
Four honeybees partake in the jitterbug, flitting about from cantaloupe flower to cantaloupe flower. Their heavy pollen sacs don’t slow them down.
Just a few feet away, male sugar pumpkin flowers have finally opened up in the cooler temperatures, but their pollen grains have yet to entice the busy little bees.
Perhaps when the females start to open, the bees will move over to help the pumpkins along.
The cantaloupe grows big, and a ladybug kindly pauses to give a size comparison.
It won’t be much longer before the melon is ripe, and there are more cantaloupes waiting their turn.
Meanwhile, other ladybugs are busy… (gasp) Avert your eyes!
The assassin bug nymph doesn’t notice. He’s too busy waiting for a tasty dinner companion.
Would that it might be this black bug, the larger version of the unknown little red bug…
Their numbers are dwindling, thanks to the ever-watchful predators and (perhaps more so) quick little fingers.
The trellised garden nears the top.
With the promise of a harvest, one hopes that the squirrels that ate their way into the birdseed container won’t turn their little black eyes toward the veggies and fruit.
The jack-o-lantern pumpkin plants get bigger and bigger. The male flowers come and go, but the cooler temperatures bring promises that females will bloom soon.
A checkered garter snake leads the way to another discovery…
that a pumpkin plant is trying to do the great escape…
behind the air conditioner, which broke just last night, thankfully timed with the cooler temperatures.
The “dwarf” papyrus continues on its world conquest, one pond at a time. Its sheer size and weight helped it shift off its support and into deeper waters. Its plan to quickly send out new growth and roots was soon foiled, however. It’s been raised back out of the water depths and is marked for major division very, very soon.
Is that a ghost haunting the house?
It’s too early for Halloween, so it must be tricksy little pole bean seedlings.
An easy move to a planter,
and then nestled in bed…
for another busy day in the garden.