Hot Day, Will Snooze

Raspberry Jelly

Volunteer Poppy & Pansies

More Baby Tomatoes

Auria

Hungarian Heart

Principe Borghese

Mystery tomato - this was labeled as "Wentzell", but I can tell by the leaves that it isn't.

Our Suppertime Visitor

   Around 6pm this evening, we were in the living room watching a show and having supper when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  Glancing out the living room window, I did a double take upon spotting this little visitor in the garden.

   A moment after this picture was taking, our visitor started munching on the sunflower.  There are a few other sunflowers in the garden plots and raised beds, but they are only about 2 inches tall.

   I opened the door as slowly and as quietly as I could to get another picture, but this spooked our visitor.  She turned left at the end of the driveway and headed toward the shallow ravine a street up that leads out of town.  Hopefully, she makes it safely home following her adventure in town.

Baby Tomatoes and Hurtin' Peas

   
   Most of the tomato plants are still in the flowering stage. Of the 14 varieties planted, only 7 have little tomatoes on them at this point.  (Click on pictures to enlarge.)

Work Release Paste

Bellestar

Black Sea Man

Jewish

Candy Sweet Icicle

Cream Sausage

Cole (planted at R's family's farm - photo to come)


   The pea patch is in sad shape.  Most of the plants have turned yellow and stopped growing following the week of rain earlier this month.  It is tempting to pull everything up, but I will give it a while longer to see if the peas bounce back. 

And The Winner is...

A-ha!  Finally, the first tomato!  Work Release Paste never disappoints.

Bachelor Button

One of the volunteer tomato plants that came up in the South garden.

The garlic patch, looking a little yellow after all the rain.

Rubenza Cosmos, just starting to bloom.

"Wassat?!"

Gaspe Flint Corn

Chillin'...

Zucchini plants

If you squint, you'll see two poor, stunted little Anaheim pepper plants in the foreground. 

   
Two White Scallop squash plants.  Even smaller than the zucchini plants.  Yeesh.

Springtime Cassis pansies and Sweet Alyssum.

Big, Hairy Visitor

   At some point Thursday night, a moose dropped by.  It is unusual for them to come into town this time of year.  Usually, we see them in the winter and early Spring.  This one sampled some leaves from two of the trees in the front yard.  I discovered this morning that he also enjoyed one of the cabbage plants near the edge of the south garden!

   I should have put a ruler down beside the print for the picture.  The print is the size of a large horse's hoof.

Soggy Start to July

    
   The week's weather forecast for Northeastern BC has been accurate.  It has rained...and rained...and rained.  The ground is again saturated, squishing underfoot. The driveway and garden plots are dotted with puddles.  The south end of the potato trench is waterlogged.  All available water barrels and buckets are filled to overflowing.  Some of the tomato plants in containers are beginning to turn yellow.  

   The sump pump in the basement has been triggered frequently in the last three days.  We've had the furnace on for the past 24 hours.  Earlier this week, I dug out my beloved red floor-length winter nightgown to sleep in.  In July.

   There is flooding in town, particularly to the south and to the west.  Several streets have been blocked off, an evacuation alert was issued for a section of the city, and a sandbag filling station has been set up for city residents.  Another rainfall warning was posted for the region two hours ago.  The forecast shows periodic rain continuing for another 7 days.  The temperature doesn't look like it will get above 20 for the next two weeks.

   I, along with the garden, would like some sunshine, heat, and butterflies, please!  Not Texas/New Mexico/Arizona heat, mind you.  Just used-to-be-predictable summertime-in-Canada heat.  25-32 degrees Celsius would be wonderful.  As a Maritimer, it feels almost sacrilegious to specify a preference for dry heat, but I'm putting that out there.  Thanks, Mother Nature. 


 Looking up the driveway

The swamped potato trench

The rain barrels are full...

...as are these...

...and these. (That's not all of them, but you get the idea.)

The trench at the side of the house that was (thankfully) dug last Fall.  It is keeping our basement from flooding.

13 degrees Celsius at 2:20pm.  Here's to sunnier days ahead!