We haven’t had such good luck with our tomatoes and pumpkins this year – although  we did get a few fresh tomatoes for Yang to add to his omelettes and stir fries.  The beans are just now coming into form.  We had one serving earlier, and we’re planing on harvesting some of these beauties soon.

I’m also hoping that though these pumpkin and gourd embryos are late comers, they may still grow and ripen with the hot autumn we’ve been having.

We didn’t have the best of luck with our sunflowers, as some form of insect (we think beetles) brutalized the plants grown from seeds planted directly into the garden.  However, after a daily spraying of tabasco sauce in water to drive off the insects, most of the sunflowers recovered.  Some even grew  up to full height and even better than the ones we’d protected by growing them as seedlings in cups before planting.

The Morning Glories had been growing full throttle, vines creeping up the trellis, until chipmunks tunneled out of the wood retaining wall on which the flower’s boxes were located and munched them silly.  It’s a jungle out there! Again, tabasco spritzing did its job and some managed to recover and grow.  I especially like the orchid colored ones.

Did you notice the  two-toned orchid and purple one?  Those hybrids pop up every year.  If you look at the seeds, they are even half black (purple flower) and half cream-colored (orchid flower).  I save the seeds every year and replant, so I sometimes even get pink instead of orchid.  I guess that’s the orchid and magenta hybrid.

We’ve had interesting fauna as well as flora this year.  First, let me introduce you to Bunzie.  A very young and small rabbit showed up at the beginning of the summer.  He has since grown!  Best of all, he seems to  eat only clover and grass – well he did devour much of a dying petunia.  However, that petunia regrouped and has a lovely deep pink flower now.  So, I guess he was just dead heading for me.  He’s actually not too afraid of Yang and me, but we don’t bother him, either.  One night, he triggered the motion-detector light outside the sun porch and we got to watch him dash hither and yon while two skunks patiently waddled about that stretch of yard looking for grubs.

I only saw one Monarch Butterfly this year, yesterday.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me – and I scared Bunzie when I rushed over to the butterfly bush to see it.  We have had at least two regular visitors to the butterfly bushes, these Tiger Swallowtails.  I love how you can see the same yellow and black patterns on the insect’s body that you can see on his wings.  I was so surprised that these guys let me get close enough to watch and take these pictures.  They also love to dine on the nectar of flox and Rose of Sharon flowers.

Another critter who loves butterfly bushes, flox, and Rose of Sharon would be the Hummingbird – or birds.  We had at least two, though usually only one showed up at a time.  When there were two, feathers flew, so to speak.  Yang got some great shots.  It’s fun to watch him , the bird not Yang, come in for a landing, wings a-whirl!  I’m sure that you can understand why the pictures are a little blurry!  Once he/she landed, the little guy enjoyed our nectar – as well as taking sips from all the flowers.

Sometimes, he just liked to sit majestically atop the feeder and survey his domain.  Other times he enjoyed parking his tuffett on the structure on which the Morning Glories grew – he thought they were tasty, too.  If you’re wondering what that contraption is atop the feeder, it’s a moat that Yang created to keep ants from climbing down into the feeder.  Yang saw some designs for sale on line, figured he could make one for much cheaper – and did it!

Sometimes the Hummer just stared at our window with a “Who you lookin’ at?” attitude.

Of course, we also had some of the other usual suspects this summer.  The Goldfinches pretty much dominated the two globe feeders, though the Redbellied Woodpecker wasn’t above shooting his long tongue through the bars to steal some sunflower hearts.

The Rosebreasted Grosbeaks were back as well.  I saw as many as three males at once one time!  I also saw the females and some juvenile males as well.  Unfortunately, though we kept putting out oranges, we only saw an Oriole here twice.  My neighbor said he saw the Oriole quite a bit, though on the feeder.

One visitor to the feeders who was rather unique for the summer was this chap.

Now how often do you see a Slate Colored Junco in new England in the middle of July?  He stayed around well into August, then I haven’t seen him since.  Someone got his GPS all fowled (ahem) up!  Now, will he be back this autumn?  Stay tuned!