Huh?

I picked a bunch of bell peppers yesterday, some to stuff for supper and the rest to chop and freeze. There are at least this many again left in the garden. Aargh... anybody (local) need peppers?

I cut the top off the first one, and I found a surprise inside! What is going on here?

How strange. I've never had a pepper like this before. Have you?

It's like it was trying to grow two more peppers inside! Or something.

Would you call that a pregnant pepper???

First day of school!

Yesterday was Courtney's first day of FIRST GRADE! And she came to my house afterwards, so I got to hear all about it. It sounded like it was a great day, and she was excited to go back today. She seemed very impressed with something called "monkey moola". 

The bus driver surprised me and didn't pull into the driveway like I thought he was going to, so I wasn't close enough or focused in for a good photo, but here she comes!

Later on, I got a better shot, after she'd been here awhile and had changed into her flip-flops, because it was pretty warm out. I'm still loving the hairdo!

On the way out to meet her bus, I took some pics, since I had the camera along. This was on my sedum bush in the wildflower bed:

Nope, it's not a monarch butterfly. It's a viceroy! I thought it seemed a bit small for a monarch, and after seeing the pics in the computer, I decided it didn't look quite right, so I did a search for a look-alike, and I very quickly found it to be the viceroy. (Dale would've known that right away, I bet!)

Here is a blog post I came across comparing the monarch and the viceroy, and then comparing them to people. :)

Also on the sedum was this big, somewhat wicked-looking bug. Anyone know what it is? Wasp? Hornet?

My peppers are turning red. Just thought you'd want to know that. Ha.

Speaking of monarchs, though, Courtney and I have been watching for the caterpillars. Monarch butterflies seem to be a rare thing this year. I've hardly seen any. However, today Courtney and I did see one near some milkweed plants, so we went searching. I found two of these:

Did you notice the tiny white thing? Below is a closer look. I'm pretty sure it's a monarch egg.

Courtney took one home, and I kept one here. They take about 4 days to hatch, so we'll know soon if that's really what they are.

Garden produce

I thought I'd give you a peek at my garden, although I took these photos over a week ago, and with the heat we've been having, things have really matured fast, so it doesn't quite look like this anymore. :)

The tomatoes had just started ripening nicely:

Several weeks of dry weather followed by the big rain we got, though, caused a lot of them to crack, even while green:

They're ripening really fast now, and I've picked a lot of them.

Here are the whole plants, over 6 feet tall in their super-duper tomato cages. All the moisture we had in the early part of the summer, however, caused a rather big leaf spot problem, as you can see at the bottoms of the plants, and it's gotten considerably worse in the last week:

My cantaloupe/muskmelons have done well, considering I only have 2 plants. There are about a dozen of them out there. We've already started eating this one... it got huge, and it's yummy!

My one butternut squash plant has produced well, too:

I have tons of green bell peppers from my 4 plants. Two of them are supposed to produce red peppers. I've forgotten which ones are which, so I'll just have to wait and see! However, if I wait long enough, they'll all turn red, anyway.

With the wet spring we had, I think every carrot seed grew. I'll have an abundant crop there! The onions have bent over and started to dry down:

Here's something in the wildflower bed that I didn't plant!

It's a Rainbow! I usually find her out there in the mornings. She still hides out from the other cats a lot. :(

She's bigger than a muskmelon. :)

Peppers

I've been harvesting my peppers lately. There have been some huge ones! I picked these a couple weeks ago to make stuffed peppers from. They're all green bell peppers, but in my waiting to get enough for a batch to stuff (and then some additional procrastination), some of them started to turn red.

Look how big they are!

I didn't know if this one was going to fit in the crock pot or not, but it just barely made it.

I've never made them in the crock pot before, but it was hot out, and I didn't want the oven heating up the house for an hour, so I gave it a try. I chose the slimmest ones, but it was a tight fit, even after sticking them in boiling water to soften them so I could squeeze them in.

Here I added some tomato sauce and their "lids". I've never used the tops when stuffing before either, but I saw a recipe that said to do it, so I tried that, too.

They turned out good, but the peppers were mushier than when I cook them in the oven. I think I like the oven ones better. How do you do yours?

I chopped and froze the other two peppers, and I've since chopped and frozen some red ones. I need to get out there and pick a bunch more before Mother Nature freezes them for me, since she's threatening to do that in the next couple nights!

Peppers

I harvested our first bell peppers yesterday. This variety is "Better Bells". Maybe they should've been called "Bigger Bells", as they certainly were that! So we had stuffed peppers for supper... mmmm!

The little tool next to them is a scoop for getting the seeds out of... peppers! I got it from Santa last Christmas and have been waiting to give it a try. It works very nicely, Jess! :-)

Potential

Things are growing in the garden. I have some tiny bell peppers.

And a few very little tomatoes. They've recovered nicely after being tasted by the deer. You can see the stumps on the right side there where they were bitten off.

These next 2 photos are day lilies that will soon be blooming.

This is my lone stargazer lily that was given to me by a dear friend right after my dad died in 1991, as a remembrance gift. It has bloomed every year, but hasn't seemed really healthy the last couple of years. It gets brown, rotted-looking spots on the buds and flowers, and if the buds survive, they don't open right. Any ideas what the problem is? Disease of some kind? The leaves are pale again this year, but so far the buds are doing okay.

And back at the bachelor pad, it's not lonely anymore. Lotsa potential there, right? ;-)