Watermelon

    Yet another in my series of volunteer plants we couldn't grow when we purposely planted seeds. This time it's watermelon. Earlier in the season, right after we had filled the middle bed with cucumber and pepper plants, we found a clump of unidentified seedlings. It turned out they were watermelon vines that would grow so aggressively I had move one of the jalapeno plants out of the bed because it was covered in vines. Completely covered, I had trouble finding it. 

  The real surprise was that the melons we've eaten so far actually tasted good.    

   Lesson learned: always toss seeds in the garden, because composting pays off in more ways than one.

Here is a picture of one of the five, yes five, small watermelons the vines were able to produce before they died. 

   Side note: I have no idea why the died, but I suspect it was the heat and lack of rain, it's killed just about everything else, despite daily waterings.

We've been freezing the rinds and giving them to the chickens as a nutritious and cooling snack. Because it is too hot.

Thanks again for reading. I hope you have a bat-tastic day! 

Fourth of July Jack-o'-lantern!

I did not post last week because of the 4th of July and a root canal that started on Wednesday afternoon and still isn't finished. Apparently, I have twisted, calcified canals. Ugh.

  Anyway, right after I picked the pumpkin, I found this hole in it like a worm had chewed into it. I put clear nail polish over the hole, hoping it would smother the little bugger if it was still in there or at least prolong the pumpkin's shelf life. It didn't work. The hole just got bigger. I doubted the pumpkin would last until October, even without the worm. So, here it is: Forth of July Jack-o'-lantern!

  You know, I couldn't find that stupid worm. We ended up mulching the seeds, they were shriveled and flat, no good for roasting. I don't have much hope that they will sprout. But we finally grew a pumpkin.

   

    Thank you for reading, and have a bat-tastic day!

  

It's too hot!

Ringo is in the house right now. Normally he is an outside cat, but he's been looking very poor lately, acting like he wanted in side, and we thought that some time in the AC would help him. 

   It hasn't been that hot, mid 90's, but the heat index has been over 100 for a few days. (You know it's hot when an afternoon shower just makes it sulty.)

He's really lost a lot of weight and just looks like he's suffering. He started looking better for a couple of days when it wasn't so hot but it didn't last.

   

   I decided to bring him in today when I saw that he had pink gloop in the corner of his eyes and wasn't very frisky. He doesn't get along with the inside cats, or most cats really, so we set him up in my room. He started looking better within an hour or so. The other cats better watch out! He might be able to go out later tonight or tomorrow.

   A few of the other outside cats have been looking bad so we might have to rotate them inside so they can cool down as well.

   We are going to get more proactive about putting ice in the cats water, at least twice a day from now on instead of once a day.  Mom's going to start tossing ice around where the cats like to lay, to try and cool them down. Unless that seems to annoy them, of course. 

   We have been dumping ice in the chickens water and spraying the run with cool water nearly everyday for while now, but I didn't think we would have to worry so much about the cats since they have so many trees to lay under. I guess that just go to show that you need to watch everyone in the heat.

  Thanks for reading, I hope you have a bat-tastic day and stay cool. 

P.S. Happy 4th of July!

Summer Pumpkin

My mother and I love pumpkins. Every October we buy a pumpkin for each of us, roast the seeds, and carve faces in it for Halloween. 

  I'm not ashamed to admit that I stopped by Walmart on my way home from school on the day after last Halloween to buy a couple of one dollar pumpkins, or that I filled my trunk with pumpkins a few days after that when we went to Kroger and saw they were giving away leftover pumpkins. Or that I have a few bags of roasted pumpkin pieces in the trianglular shapes used to carve out Jack-o'-lanterns in the freezer, because the chickens were tied of pumpkin and I didn't think the mulch could handle any more. (Side note: the meat from carveing pumpkins tastes just as good as smaller pie pumpkins to me.)

  For several years we tried to grow our own pumpkins from seeds, but after a couple of years of buying seeds and, at best, only getting a few vines on which the female blooms would rot off, we gave up on trying to grow our own pumpkins.  

Que this year, in which somehow we must have missed one of the delicous seeds, and it not only grew into a vine but did what the store bought seeds could not: produce a pumpkin! A pumpkin in in the summer. It's a miracle!

  As always thank you for reading and have a bat-tastic day!