Lingering summer

Looks like I ‘m a bit distracted by the few warm days we’re getting this week, a bit of summer lingering past its due date. While I’m out raking leaves, the alpine  strawberries are fruiting again. Very tart fruits, but fruits nonetheless.

Autumn late bloomers

Come on, little pea! You can do it! You can still flower before it’s too late. Look at how well these alpine strawberries are doing.

Yet another strawberry

I’m shocked. I was right. The mystery volunteer opened a characteristic white flower and confirmed that it is indeed a strawberry. And now that I’ve been flinging half-eaten berries up the hill, I think I know how it got up there.
I wonder how many more there are?

Bowl of berries

Today’s harvest:  four big juicy strawberry strawberries and three intense Alpine strawberries. It’s a real incentive to get your shoes on in the morning when you know there’s ripe strawberries waiting for you. And the snails.

Another batch of volunteers

Last year I discovered squash bees in my yard. Since they specialize in squash, I wanted to make sure they would have squash flowers. So I planted some crookneck summer squash. And it’s coming up.
So far so good. And now this year’s batch of volunteer squash are showing up, which means we might have winter [...]

Fruit!

Fruit? Not yet.
It’s exciting to see so many. They barely flowered last year.

More green emerges

It’s getting warmer and it’s showing more greenery out there, but it’s looking a little like collards are not the sort of plants that consider a foot of snow good protection against winter.  I haven’t seen them since I managed to cut a potful of leaves for greens on New Year’s Day. Now, I wonder [...]

It snew!

Last night, it snew. And then it rained. And then it sleeted. Yick. No one wants to look at slush, so here’s another plant staying green in the snow. It’s Alpine strawberry. They don’t spread like regular strawberries and all summer they produce tiny little sweet berries.