I’ve been participating in an experimental garden in east Gilbert. My gardening partner and I share the same love of beets and brussel sprouts. We planted pretty much every winter seed we could get our hands on which included borage (which we really have no idea what to do with although it makes lovely purple flowers which attracts a LOT of bees), and romanesco cauliflower which looks gorgeous and tastes fantastic. I prefer mine oven roasted.
 
So that wasn’t an acorn squash. It was a melon. And I was getting prepped to stuff the “squash” with quinoa for lunch. It was grown from seeds I purchased at the native seed store in Tucson. Earlier this summer, I planted a lot of different things hoping anything would grown. Quelle surprise!
(Guess I should keep better records. Or any records.)
I am so thrilled that the weather is finally cooling down. Not only is it easier to ride my scooter in cooler weather, but plants actually grow. Something about dropping below one hundred degrees triggers happier plants. My grapevine looks bad; it’s the time of year that the bugs eat it, but everything else looks great. I have some corn that might produce something, and my native american squash seeds grew into a beautiful vine that produced what I think is an acorn squash (see photo). The vine is doing pretty well on the lawn. I guess grass is good for something. I’ve planted my seeds for lettuce, kale, carrots, bok choy, chives, and more. We’ll see what grows-I’m not really one for labeling or designating.
It’s been a strange few weeks around here with the insect observation. I’ve had a rather intimidating sized spider living above our door, her three foot web strung tightly between the palm and the grapefruit tree. I’ve left her alone because I am weary of the mosquitos. She could easily straddle a half dollar.
Tonight, we noticed a three-inch-long green dragonfly by the outside lamp. Dragonflies also eat mosquitos, and their larvae eat mosquito larvae. Crazy, eh? Look at those wings!
It’s funny the strange phrases one remembers from junior high.
Last week, as I was watering my garden, there was movement under the chard as something rather large struggled to avoid getting soused. I thought at first it must’ve been a mouse or lizard even though I have never seen a mouse at my house nor a lizard of that size, but a rather large moth started crawling up the wall. It was bigger than my lens cap, and the beautiful pink markings made me grab my camera.
Earlier this summer, Aimee, Stephanie, Ryan and I traveled down to Tucson to get out of town. The heat was inescapable as Tucson has relatively the same temperature as Phoenix, but it does have an interesting artsy, indie, hippie culture which is an oasis in itself. In the downtown fourth avenue area, we ate at a vegetarian restaurant with a morroccan theme for lunch, purused the books at a liberal bookstore, and drank coffee at a stand with a back patio. I watched the three others pick up mesquite pods from the dirty sidewalk in front of where we parked; they intended to make flour from the pods, but Stephanie said they went bad after a couple of forgotten weeks in the car. We also picked up native Arizonan seeds from the Native Seed Search store. We finished the day trip with a visit to a local coffee roaster where Aimee managed to talk the owner into buying all of our drinks, and we ate dinner at the Korean restaurant next door. And we played “Hinky-Pinky” for about a full dirty hour on the return drive.
