For being such a reluctant gardener, my garden is doing surprisingly well. I picked the 1st zucchini this morning. Lots of tomatoes coming but none ripe yet. Pepper plants at the far end are still small. The garden bed is long and narrow because I built it for blueberry bushes - which I never could get to grow, even though right down the hill they thrive. The other half (not in the pic) has thornless blackberries, green onion, shallots, garlic, and a few eggplants.
It's not too often you can get two hummingbirds to sit still for a photo! They like hanging out on the fence of the dog pen right outside the living room window.
Today is Mike's birthday, he would have been 46.
This deer came right into the yard in broad daylight friday. Since last post I've picked and put up more berries, made banana-blueberry bread, yum, made more banana-blueberry bread, hauled all my non-burnable construction debris to the dump, burned the burnable, got the tractor running, started cleaning up the jeep to get IT running (needs a battery), ran some errands, weedeated, weeded, mowed, etc....
Today my neighbor Jim and I (and Tux) hiked down to the creek with machetes and reclaimed my trail. Yay! Once down there realized my trail is exactly across the creek from the trail we were on on the deer lease last time. Puts it in much better perspective. AND easier access from both sides. Way cool. 
Last thursday I picked a HUGE amount of blueberries, today I picked more. Eeeek! I've made 3 batches of jam, a couple of batches of blueberry muffins, lots of freezer packs and tonight I'll make some banana-blueberry bread. I've been waiting forever for the bananas to ripen so I can try this recipe. Also picked blackberries. As of today I had enough for a batch of jam (which I made this afternoon). While I was elbow deep in canning and freezing I decided to go to the veggie stand in Greenbriar and picked up some awesome fresh corn and purple hulls and put those up.
Yesterday I was going to log in and post this pic of the pretty little yearling that came to the feeder around 5 tuesday evening. But it stormed all yesterday morning and then I was busy in the afternoon. Then last night around 7 I looked out the back window and saw a couple of deer on the hillside of the clear cut behind me . Looked through the binoculars and saw they were nice bucks. Kept looking and more and more came out! At one point I think there were eight but I managed to get a decent pic of SIX in one shot. You might have to click the picture for full size to get a good look.
After the storms this morning I had a visitor. A nice little doe deer.
Rainy day today. Puttered around the kitchen, read a bit, and took an afternoon nap. I didn't even go outside until it was "Take The Dogs For A Walk" time.
Paula sent me this pic of one of her beautiful orchids.
