Finally - pictures. First is my plumeria tree which is going on 12 years old and for some reason it is blooming like mad this summer. There are at least a dozen clusters of blooms on it like this one and best of all I saw my first hummingbird of the year checking it out! I put up a hummingbird feeder in June and haven't had any visitors yet, but now with this guy blooming I may have some more luck.
My pumpkin patch which only a few weeks ago looked pathetic finally took off like a rocket in the last couple weeks with all the heat. While it may not be a record breaking pumpkin crop, there is still the potential to be some very nice once (no giant ones this year though). In the front of the picture is my attempt at trellising cucumbers. We'll see how it works out, but so far so good.
Also blooming are my sunflowers, they were taking their sweet time growing and are quite weedy, but they outgrow most weeds by at least a few feet and at least distract from the clutter of the weeds.
My tomatoes look about as good as they ever had and Anna has also been growing with them! I'm not sure how well she'll like tomatoes this year, but she likes taking a little walk through the garden, but all the big plants.
And last but not least half of my bees seem to be doing well. I last checked them about a week ago and the hive facing the photo had just about filled up two supers, so I put two more on. The other hive is a little more pokey but I'm reasonably sure they'll catch up a little by the end of the summer. When I took this picture it was about 92 and if I was more daring I could have taken an up close picture of what they were doing. On hot days they go out and get some water and then come back and sit on the bottom entrance facing out from the front of the hive. They then somehow spit out this water and hold on and beat their wings and create sort of a little draft up through the hive to help keep their wax from melting. It's neat to watch, but if you stand there for too long they usually try to shoo you away.
As long as we keep getting some rain for the next few weeks, it looks like we will have a halfway decent crop, I wish that were true for people that live south of here where rain hasn't been so abundant. It's probably too late for a lot of farms and it will be interesting to see what happens to the prices of food this fall and winter if the drought continues. I'll try to take some more fun pictures next week.
