First day of fall clean-up

And the dust is flying! The soil is so dry! No precipitation has fallen for a while. Every day is warm, sunny, and fairly warm (60'sF). I turned the compost in my Earth Machine composter, not quite ready to use. Maybe before the snow flies but I'll likely wait until next spring. Will write more later about more activities this past weekend. What a great day for gardening it was! Oh yeah, harvested my last two acorn squash on Saturday - the last items to come out of the garden.

Spider at the window!

I've become fascinated by a spider named Cat Face spider (Araneus gemmoides), called that because its abdomen resembles the face of a cat. I'd never seen this spider prior to moving the the San Luis Valley, and we're now hosting our second known Cat Face spider visitor on the outside of the house. The picture to the left is probably a female since it was fairly large - nothing to show its relative size, but its abdomen was probably at least the size of an average marble, or the upper part of my pinky finger. The one shown in the image I found in August 2006, when it was hanging out on the north side of the house in an sheltered area on a fence post. It came running out when I was preparing to work on the fence.

The second Cat Face spider visitor is now visible in the living room window that faces south, and has spun a big web covering much of the window (photo to right). Just this morning it caught a moth (or the moth stumbled into the web more likely) and is now wrapping it in silk. I guess next it'll make a meal of it and then dispose of the dried-up body.

Spiders are such interesting critters, but I always get the creeps when I imagine one of these guys crawling on me!

The URL below has some information on this particular type of spider. http://entomology.wsu.edu/insectoftheweek/CatFaceSpider.html

A "root" cellar

What a beautiful day today! Sunny and warm, blue sky, new snow up in the mountains. Valley potato harvesting is going strong. Today I harvested more!! cherry tomatoes, swiss chard, and two eight-ball zucchini squash (summer). I can barely believe I'm still getting vegies from the garden; plants should be dead and dry by now, killed by frost.

Since I have too many carrots and onions to consume in the very near future, I decided to try "root cellaring", which is a misnomer at my house since we don't have a cellar. But I needed to do something.....so I dug as deep as I could into the earth in the sunroom on the east side of the house, which still turned out to be only about 8". Then I got a strong cardboard box that formerly held 20 lbs. of peaches, and put it in the hole. I then wrapped each carrot in newsprint-type paper and laid them, stacked in two layers, in the box. On top of the carrots I placed the unwrapped onions. (Later I learned that this is not the proper storage technique for onions, so I'll probably pull them out tomorrow or later this week; they're supposed to hang in bunches in a cool dry space.) I closed up the box, and then topped it off with several sheaves of straw from bales that I had gotten from a co-worker last year. I'm hoping the straw gives the box enough protection from the midday heat that we're still having, and, once it gets cold, from the low temperatures.

Hard freeze? Not yet !

We've nudged freezing temperatures with 32.1 and 32.3, but I still have productive tomato and pepper plants, and am also still harvesting swiss chard (a little more hardy!). Last night I harvested lots of cherry tomatoes and several peppers, and many LARGE carrots (see photo). The carrots are probably a little too big?? All of the red and white onions were harvested a week or so ago. I think I may be reaching the end of the harvest though, this hard frost-free period has to come to an end soon. In 2005 our first good frost was 9/15, in 2006 it was 9/17, last year it was 9/26.
Many of my perennials are still blooming - New England Aster, coreopsis, yarrow, Russian sage, and others.
We've had a huge number of tiny flying insects cruising around - my tomato vines are covered with them, they go up your nose when you're outside, crawl up shorts, and more. It's unusual and I have no idea why they're so numerous. They do seem to be attracted to water so I've covered my water containers to reduce the attraction.

Upcoming frosty night (maybe)

Since I've been away the past few days, I spent a bit of time in the vegie garden harvesting and looking things over. Weather report says we're supposed to get down to the low 30's tonight, so I've covered the tomatoes. I decided to skip covering the rest of the stuff, mostly due to laziness and the time of season. Figured I can always go to the Farmer's Market.......

Tonight I harvested oodles of green beans, quite a few cherry tomatoes, two eight-ball zucchini squash, and a couple green peppers.

I rescued two large grasshoppers that had leaped into my water containers but were still alive. Wonder how long they can hang out in the water; I have yet to pull a dead one out.

I have several silver buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea & canadensis) serving as a windbreak for my vegie garden. They seem sort of prone to some bug infestations, but usually recover over the winter when most or all of the insects die. Well, one of the more recently-planted buffaloberries had suddenly started looking terrible - most leaves drying up & falling off, like it was on its last legs. Looking closely at the shrub tonight, I discovered these alarming looking bugs, along with some aphids, scale (I think), and then quite a few ladybugs. I put some of the scary-looking bugs in a jar to take inside the house to identify - upon looking through Whitney Cranshaw's "Garden Insects of North America", I really quickly found the "scary" bug: it was the larval form of the ladybug!!!! This is soo cool, I don't think I've ever seen this guy before! See picture, or page 545 of Whitney's book. The larvae are described as "active hunters that can crawl rapidly over plants, searching for food." They can consume many prey, reportedly several dozen.

You go, guys!!!! Eat those aphids & scale!!!!

Missing caterpillar and more

I'm really sorry to say that my monarch larva is gone. I discovered this a few days ago when I went to check on its size and take a picture. Boo-hoo! I wonder if a bird found it? Seems unlikely since the caterpillars hang out on the underside of the milkweed leaves. Dang! Haven't seen any other 'pillars either, which is kind of unusual.

It feels like we're having a somewhat early autumn, at least where temperatures are concerned - had a very light and spotty frost last Wednesday or Thursday AM. Some of my bean plants and a few squash leaves were affected. Leaves are beginning to change colors on some trees, especially on the cottonless cottonwood tree in our front yard. My Russian sages, New England asters, and sedums are abuzz with flies and bees - they must like this time of year when such goodies are abloom. Photo to right is of a blooming Russian sage with a bee hanging on.

Harvest today was a bunch of green and yellow beans, tomatoes, and radishes. Green beans have been put in the freezer, and the tomatoes & radishes will be eaten!

Monarch larva are back!

This is the time of summer when I start inspecting the milkweed--it's time to begin seeing monarch butterfly caterpillars (larva). My efforts were rewarded - yesterday I found my first larva on the underside of a milkweed leaf! This smallish one is only about 1.5" long, and isn't really chubby yet like it will be in a week or two.

Earlier in the season before the milkweed had even bloomed, I found the coolest insect perched on the unopened flowers. What amazes me about this creature is the exact match between its colors and the colors of the milkweed. What a great camouflage!

Vegetable harvest today: bunch of green & gold beans, cherry & Early Girl tomatoes