Signs of autumn

I heard my first autumn sandhill crane call yesterday. Tonight we're due to have our first hard frost; I had erroneously thought it was last night (Sunday, not Monday), so yesterday harvested tomatoes & beans, and then later in the evening covered as much as I could in hopes of staving off the effects of the cold. But as it's now only 39 degrees (5:30 AM Monday), looks like frost won't occur today anyway.
Leaves are continuing to turn golden yellow, and the squirrels have been going after the crabapples which are covering the lawn.
I purchased two new shrubs recently (Ninebark and Rabbitbrush) at a great price. In preparation for planting the Ninebark, I was digging out more of the turf in the frontyard. For the second time this season I punctured the irrigation line---DANG. Now I have to hold off until I get the right part to fix it. I now consider myself to be an expert in irrigation line repair.
The monarch larva appear to be gone; if I were to look in the vicinity I could probably find their cocoons. Way too late for them to survive when/if they come out.

HUGE ripe raspberry

I planted everbearing raspberries in a new location last year, and decided they really liked their location, as the canes grew at least three feet over the summer. A couple of the canes are bowed nearly to the ground with the weight of berries. I was out in the vicinity of the patch this evening picking up the ever-present dog poop, and noticed a huge red raspberry, ripe for the taking! This is the biggest one I've gotten off any of my raspberry plants. I don't know if the remaining berries will ripen before frost hits.
High Country Gardens is now offering various fruit plants for sale and claim theirs will produce before frost.

More Monarch caterpillars found

There are three caterpillars that I've found, and since they're kind of hard to find, more could be found. And they don't stay put - one night they'll be on one milkweed, so I mark that one with a stake so I can easily find the caterpillar later. Then I come back a day or two later and look for the critter, and it's moved to a completely different plant. Don't know why they do that.

The little guy to the right is the smallest; originally it was up on the leaves of a full-grown plant, then the next day when I returned, it was on a very small, juvenile milkweed plant. I don't know if it fell from the higher plant, or if the leaves of the larger, older milkweed were too tough for a new, young caterpillar, so it voluntarily moved.

The caterpillar to the left is one of the two bigger ones. Last night when I went out to look for all three of them, I was only able to find two. They can be difficult to spot since they generally stay on the underside of the leaves. I suspect, too, that a bird would be excited about finding one of these tasty morsels.

Monarch caterpillar is back!

Last year I didn't have any Monarch caterpillars come to my purposely-planted milkweed patch. T'was very disappointing. But tonight I went out to the milkweed to do the usual inspection of the undersides of the leaves, and what do I see?! A very juvenile caterpillar munching away! It seems pretty late in the summer, and if history runs true in the case o f past butterfly/caterpillar metamorphases(?) I've experienced and been fortunate enough to view here in my garden, this little creature will not make it to the chrysalis & then butterfly stage before cold temperatures set in. I'm going to try to faithfully track its progress & growth as August & September continue.
I wonder why the Monarch butterflies seem to wait until so late in the season to deposit their eggs. Actually, I haven't even seen any Monarch butterflies here in my yard anywhere this season, so I suppose I should be somewhat surprised to see the caterpillar. They are more than welcome, and I wish I could help them extend their seemingly-limited lifespan.
I feel like I offer an oasis in the pesticide-desert when I see these little critters here.

Pollinators are happy!

I spent a while out in the vegetable garden yesterday - watering, picking cabbage worms, watching all the little insects flitting around, and becoming enamored with the swallowtail butterfly that kept visiting my Mexican sunflower (torch tithonia). I was commenting to someone at work that I had seen so few butterflies this year, I was beginning to think something was wrong (I guess I meant something besides the copious quantities of pesticide that are used in this agricultural region).
But all it takes is some time out in the garden and a pair of open eyes. The pollinators LOVE my torch tithonia - this is an annual plant I grow from seed. Usually I have difficulty growing it from seed, at least here in Colorado. But this year I tried a different technique: I sowed many more seeds in indoors starter pots than I usually do, so had many more surviving seedlings. I even had enough plants to give away a couple. Along with being a great pollinator attractant, the seeds will also attract birds later. It's also a beautiful plant.

I harvested my first brusselsprouts yesterday, along with green beans, one red cabbage, and some cherry tomatoes. I also removed the last of the row covers from my cabbage-family plants; I figured any damage that occurs from cabbage worms I can mostly nip in the bud from there on out. Turns out the moths had gotten under the row covers, since I did have some damage already. Had to go on a killing spree in search of cabbage worms . . .

Frost damage on August 9th ??!!!!

Holy cow! Got home Sunday evening from a weekend absence; went out into the garden to check up on stuff, and found frost damage on many squash leaves and a row of beans! What a shock & surprise that was! This is a first for my summers in this area - to have to be concerned about frost damage (thus, no output) this soon. Usually I wouldn't think about it a lot until early September.

I think a harbinger of this has been the cool nights we've had much of the summer; very few nights in the 50's, most in the 40's. And not high 40's either - many low 40's.

The photo to the right is of one of my summer squash with the frost-damaged leaves.

Everything else, except the one row of bush beans shown left, looks OK. At this point I don't know how much impact this will have on production. There are still lots of good, intact squash leaves; not sure the same can be said of the row of beans. They had just started producing small beans; this cold bout may slow that process down enough that production of fully grown beans won't happen.
Plus it takes a while for the plants to recover in the morning from such cool nights; that too will slow production.
The low temperature at our house August 9 (yesterday morning) was 36.5, this morning the low was 37.5. I suspect the actual low temperature 150' away (from the outdoor thermometer) in the vegetable garden was a little lower.

Rain, weeds, rain, weeds, rain, weeds

It looks like the land of Russian thistle here; if there were more weeds I could easily identify I'd list more. Over the past week we've gotten nearly 3/4 inch of rain, which for this high, arid desert seems like a lot. I'm seeing growth in plants that haven't done a thing the past 3-4 years.
All of my yarrow are blooming, rabbitbrush is just beginning to put on beautiful yellow flowers, Russian sage is looking great, as are gaillardias, monarda, Mexican Hat, and more. Jupiter's beard, planted less than five weeks ago, is blooming. My Scarlet Runner pole beans (planted just for the hummingbirds) are climbing rapidly and beginning to flower; nearly endless squash blossoms but I'm not doing a thing with them. By the way, I had my first cheese-stuffed squash blossoms at Rino's Italian Restaurant in Salt Lake City back in late June - was very yummy. I'm pretty sure I don't have the patience to make something like that.
Lettuce, greens, Swiss chard are all being harvested in abundance, kohlrabi in less abundance but still good.
I purchased 35 lbs. of canner tomatoes at a local greenhouse and will be spending quite a few hours making "Firey Salsa". My recipe includes jalapenos, onions, garlic, lime juice, red bell peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, vinegar, & salt. I found this recipe in Parade magazine (Sunday Denver Post insert) a couple of years ago, and it has become my favorite salsa recipe.
Whew, that's all for now.