Did I say Summer was gone??

Okay, I know I said Summer was gone.. but by golly the temperatures this past weekend were great! The nights are cooler, but the days have been up in the mid 80's. Warm, and sunny and gorgeous! The next couple of days are supposed to have highs in the 90's!

Guess we can still go short-sleeved and barefoot outside for a few more days. Wooo!

Summer is gone

I haven't wanted to admit it, and even though it isn't yet the official first day of Fall, Summer is gone. Temperature's are fading, not reaching those nice highs of 90s or even 80s. Today was a high of around 66. (It still felt warmer outside than it did inside my house though...) and tonight, there is actually a freeze warning! SEPTEMBER 16th??? Freeze warning????

Our garden is not so good. Corn is drying out and dying. Pumpkin plants are dying as well. The biggest pumpkin we have is turning orange. All the vines seem to be dying. The other three pumpkins that we had, are small, and I don't think they are growing any bigger either.

As soon as September rolled around, the weather has gotten cooler, and the days have been more cloudy, and rainy. I just think it's weird... As soon as September got here, Mother Earth, Nature, whatever seemed to know that meant fall. Cool temperatures, and shorter days for sure!

Anyway, all I wanted to say was Fall is here. I decided it is not worth denying anymore. I just don't want to think about cold weather and snow! It's bad enough oil is so expensive.

It has been a wonderful summer.... Goodbye warm weather and barbecues.

Nature's Pollinator

Just click on the above picture I took to see it full size. If you look closely you can see that the bee has pollen all over its body and legs. You can even see the special bristles on the bee's legs just made for getting pollen stuck all in them. This picture was taken in my very own garden on one of our beautiful sunflowers. We also have another type of plant that grows outside our window in the summer. Bees of all types swarm around its flowers as well in numbers that easily equal hundreds. Here's a closeup of another type of bee on that:

Extinct? I think not!

If you look closely at these pictures of Killer and Ginger, how can you say dinosaurs are extinct? Sure the great, lumbering beasts that roamed the earth millions of years are gone, but it is plain as day to me that evolution just took its course and created the bird as we know it today. Look at the beak, and the way it is formed. Did you know that a bird's beak is just an outgrowth of bone? There is a special type of gene that gives each bird its different looking beak. I believe it's a 'bone morphogenetic protein' gene. Morpho, is another word for 'changing shape' and protein is necessary for growth of cells, muscles, tissues, etc. How do you think dinosaurs like the Triceratops, or Stegosaurus got their horns and spikes? My bet is a similar gene modified their bones to grow differently in dinosaurs, just like beaks in chickens.

Look closely around the eyes of these two chickens. See the circle of skin? Feathers are modified scales. Dinosaurs and reptiles had scales. You can see how the skin around a chicken's eye looks like small scales. And have you ever seen a chicken's legs and feet? Looks to me just like a T-Rex's hands, just moved down to be feet.

So, next time someone tells you that dinosaurs are extinct, you can smile to yourself, and think, 'yes, but there are still modern day dinosaurs living today..."

Sunflowers in the Sunshine

It has been a long haul, but our sunflowers have finally begun to bloom. Remember in one of my earlier posts, Garden Varmints, when we found out a squirrel had eaten our garden? The sunflowers were what the squirrel noshed on the most, and it had eaten the tops off of almost all of them. Someone told us that we might as well pull them up as they wouldn't come back. Thank goodness I remembered my classes in plant biology and if you cut off the top of a plant, it will try and grow a new apex, or terminal bud. (That's just fancy speak for the top of the plant.) If you look closely at this picture, you can see there are two smaller sunflower plants below that have smaller blooms, and they haven't opened yet. Those are just two of the plants that used to be headless, thanks to a hungry squirrel. If I was a little more childish, I would be sticking out my tongue, putting my thumbs to my ears, palms out, fingers extended and wiggling, and blowing a big ol' raspberry. Thank goodness I'm more mature than that. Right now, I'm just saying, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!" Score one for garden - zero for squirrel.

Golden Delicious

This is a tree in our backyard. It isn't your normal everyday backyard tree, however. This is an apple tree. (If you click on it, you will get a much bigger, clearer picture.)

Last summer/fall the tree had some crabby crab-apples. This summer, besides a great summer for our garden, has turned out to be an excellent summer for growing apples. We noticed that there were many more apples on the tree than last year. Then, my wife picked one up off the ground and took a bite. I said, "that's going to be pretty bitter, you know," and she said, "Nope! Golden Delicious!"

The apples last year never got beyond green skinned sour apples that were small and not tasty at all. This year the skin turned yellow, the apples are bigger, and they definitely are sweet and tasty. (If you can find one that hasn't been attacked by caterpillars and insects, that is.)

I have no idea how old these trees are, but I would love to learn how to trim the tree for next year to get a better crop. I seem to recall hearing that if the tree gets bigger and is left to grow tall, then the apples are smaller and the trees don't bear as much fruit. If anyone knows the proper way to prepare an apple tree for the growing season, feel free to leave a comment!