Garden Journal and Overall Update July 2014

In real life, my job has been super crazy which is causing me some anxiety and has made blogging even more erratic if that's possible.  I am coordinating a project surveying for a rare butterfly species - the Ottoe Skipper - and we have found none of them even though we are a month into their flight period and we are scouring the sites they were previously known from.  It's meant a lot of time on the road which has actually meant a decent amount of time for reading, especially by audio in the car, though I'm well behind on reviews.  Most recently I finished listening to The Son by Phillip Meyer (excellent if you have a strong stomach) and Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris (hilarious and weird). 

Ottoe Skipper Photo by Mike Reese

Thankfully, this weekend I was free to volunteer at my county's fair in the Horticulture Show!  I have done this for the past 3-4 years as a Master Gardener and it is surprisingly fun.  There are lots of cool plants and veggies and you get to meet all sorts of serious gardeners from the area.  I had three things entered: tomatoes, a planter with lavender (see bunny planter below) and an orchid which happened to be blooming gorgeously right now.  All three got blue ribbons and the orchid won its division!

Look at all the color!

Daylilies Galore!

A bunny planted with English Lavender

This was especially encouraging because my gardening this year has been haphazard (see crazy job above).  Below are my tomato plants getting ready to take over the yard because I never got around to caging them.

Attack of the killer tomatoes

I doubt I'll get much from my peppers as they are getting smothered by the tomatoes but one plant in a pot has a couple of nice Sweet Italians.  Just waiting for them to redden up a bit.

 One thing I am super excited about is my Meyer Lemon tree which bloomed like crazy a couple weeks ago and now has several tiny little lemons on it!  I am a little worried as the leave have gotten very yellow, probably from the insane amount of rain we've had the last couple months.  They like to be well drained and to get a little dry between waterings.  Hope the lemons continue to grow!  Then I can make this cocktail!

So on the blog, not much of note is going on though I did notice one interesting trend.  In the last couple weeks I've published two posts about media that has come to my attention because of my fandom of other media - Castle (Firefly), and Rats Saw God (Veronica Mars).  This all ties in nicely with the Top Ten Tuseday post on favorite TV shows which would've been a brilliant plan if I had actually planned it.  Oh well, sometimes these things just happen....

Well, I'm off to harvest the garlic which is looking ready to be pulled...