Quite a few mornings a week finds me baking down the road at the theme park, but on the mornings I'm not rolling croissants and such, well, I am out doing gardeny things. Yes, gardeny is totally a word!
This morning was one of those days. The hops always catch my eye first, as they are over fifteen feet tall. I just love gazing at the bines and their little plentiful cone covering.
But my gaze wasn't held for long by the voluminous bines, for I had flowers to cut.
The strawflowers are so prolific! It seems like I am cutting blooms every other day or so on them. I especially love the fire colored variety, and strangely, I wasn't sad at all that there was one fully bloomed out to enjoy.
Over on the far side of the flower beds is a small patch of branching sunflowers that I am growing for seed. The particular variety name escapes me at the moment, but I absolutely adore the coronal ring of fire on each of the blooms, can't wait to have a whole row of them next year!
After cutting and bundling starflowers, sunflowers, statice, strawflowers, and zinnias, I left my pile of soon to be dried blooms and wandered over to gander at what will soon be another project of mine, the tomatoes.
All of the tomato plants are really producing nice sized fruit this year. The Barred Boar and pink heirloom varieties never disappoint.
Remind me I said this in a month of two after I can all of the plant's offerings...
The corn is right behind the tomatoes as far as production goes, I'd say I'll have a couple dozen ears of corn, which honestly suits me just fine. We don't eat tons of corn so I just plant enough to enjoy a few meals of fresh corn on the cob and a few bags of frozen kernels for recipe usage throughout the winter.
One thing we do eat a lot of and that I am going to have a bumper crop of is pumpkins. Holy Good Gourd! Oh wait, I didn't grow those...Anyway, I have a TON of pumpkins!
The Rouge Vif D'etampes (Cinderella) plant has multiple good size squash growing, as does the Japanese hulless, Connecticut Field, and Sugar Pie. Even the competition pumpkin has a couple fruit growing, a thing that makes me happy.
I scaled way back on the pumpkin production this year, but it still makes my heart soar to see several hundred pounds of fruit developing. Here comes pumpkin season!
In fact, the impending arrival of fall made me feel a bit mischievous, so I struck a super mysterious looking Kat pose with my bundles of flowers. I mean, all the flower Insta influencers seem to pose with their bunches of flowers, but honestly, now that I tried it, I can't see what the allure is? Maybe I did it wrong? I wasn't whimsical and ethereal enough? I should have smeared some dirt on my brow and looked like I needed an infusion of chai tea, I am sure that would have helped.
Anyway, goofing around aside, things are coming along nicely here on the homestead. In fact, one particular creature I have gestated and grown is getting ready to leave our humble home and head off into the world to start her life. It's a bit on the bittersweet side of the spectrum of feels. We are a close little family and have never been apart for long, so while I am beyond over the moon for her to go, it's still just, weird. And I've noticed that we all are noticing it.
But just like on the homestead, life has seasons too, and you get to choose how you view going through them. I choose joy.
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's pollen coated and never capable of being demoted iPhone. The text divider image was made in Canva.