Odd Birds

 I'll be glad when all these juvenile birds get their adult feathers. Seeing them now when they're no longer in the begging stage with parents around, I am often perplexed by what this strange bird is. The juncos look like song sparrows... white in their tails rarely visible. The towhees are beyond description, every one different, some with gray heads. The juvenile rufous hummingbirds are brilliant green with rufous only on the sides of their chests. I have to look at photos on the web to be sure what I am seeing. I'll attach a collection of downsized photos I took today. Can you identify these birds??

 

 

An Odd Garden Year

 We all have seen photos of beautiful, neat and tidy gardens. Well, my garden is nothing like that. I planted late, some things didn't come up so I replanted. I didn't use strings to make straight rows so they're not straight. And I only hoed between rows once. The weeds are mostly ground cover type so I let them go. My garden is a jungle. 

 

Friend Mary gave me seeds she had saved from a squash she bought at a farmer's market. She said it was the best squash she had ever eaten. Of course, there's no telling if it was carefully kept from other varieties so could have hybridized. Who knows what it will produce. All I know so far is the plants are huge and taking over their side of the garden. There was a path between them and the tomato plants-in-tires. The path has disappeared.

 

But the truly weird plants are the birdhouse gourds. I planted seeds that I dug out of birdhouse gourds I had bought and made into bird houses last year. (The swallows love their houses.) But the seeds did not come up last year. They were biding their time, apparently, and are up in profusion this year. I had never seen birdhouse gourd vines before. They are climbing over our high garden fence between garden and goats. Usually, the goats eat everything that peeks through the garden fence. But they are not touching these vines. I don't know why. A friend said birdhouse gourds smell odd to her so maybe it's the smell.

 Weirdest of all on these weird plants are the flowers. I have never seen squash flowers like these. Or any flowers like these. They very quickly add miniature gourds to the flowers... that very quickly become bigger. I have no idea how big they'll end up.

 

 

The raised beds are a little more under control. But their plants had a late start, too, because of our unseasonably cold (frosts nightly through June) then broiling hot in July weather. Peas finally were able to bloom and fruit in July and are going strong still now -- in August.

Here's hoping we have a long fall so we get some corn (it's just now knee high -- some of it) and pumpkins and cucumbers and beans and ripe tomatoes and all the other vegetables that we are usually overwhelmed with by August.