Last time, I showed you part of what my garden looked like at the end of August. This is for Hive account@simplymike's challenge... here is the last part for August.

Sunflowers!

Here is my best-ever sunflower picture. I just love this one! This little guy was poking out between the rows of corn.

Then, another little one amongst another row of corn.

The giant sunflowers are huge - maybe 9-10 ft high or more!

This other one is ripe now - some birds are helping themselves to the seeds - hopefully we have some to keep at the end...

Squashes and Melons

I might feel worse about these pumpkins not producing anything if it wasn't for the recent newspaper article talking about everyone in the area having trouble with these this year.

But something is growing here - not sure if this is another pumpkin plant or another type of squash (I'd have to dig out my notes...) Something is growing!

I noticed today that we even have a cucumber developing, hanging near one of the giant sunflowers.

And our watermelons! This one is nearly to "personal" size now!

Corn and Sorghum!

Above (by the small sunflower), you can see how the corn is developing ears now. I'm hoping that maybe this red stemmed variety (will have to look up which variety) will produce some ears as well...

Now for one of our surprises. I'm very familiar with corn plants and their unique "flowers" (above.) So, watching these very corn-like plants (below) develop has been interesting. Something from the chicken feed sprouted. I figured that maybe it was a different type of corn until it started flowering. This is very different!

So, researching as I was writing this post, I discovered that it's not corn at all - but sorghum! So, we'll let them ripen and harvest the grains from the top of each stalk. I think you can boil it like rice - otherwise, you can (apparently) pop it.

Bad News

Unfortunately, our chicken project has come to an abrupt end (temporarily). The damaged door failed completely when a stray German Shepherd leapt onto it and killed at least four of the six chickens. One was found alive next door (and is now residing with some friends) and the other is still missing a week later.

Before anyone decides to tell me about the things we did wrong... I know already.

We weren't ready to start chickens, but someone had assured me we could keep them at their house so that the girls could do 4-H - without telling me that the offer would disappear when they grew up. (This was also before Covid-19 began making changes in our lifestyle making 4-H difficult, if not completely impossible.) In-laws weren't keen on keeping them at their house, but finally allowed it, but when the rooster started crowing, they didn't want him too close to the house, so their new location wasn't as secure as the previous one. Then the door started breaking and I hurt myself, so couldn't put a lot of strength into making the new one.

Honestly, we were dealt a losing hand to begin with... I played it as well as I could, but it wasn't enough.

One good thing is that the structure of the chicken tractor itself remained sound - despite the weight of a German Shepherd on top of it. The only thing that failed was the door, that was already damaged.

The chicken project is put aside until we find our property... then we'll build before the first chick comes into the house (well, that's the plan anyway.)

Preparing for Winter

This next week is probably going to be our last warm spell - so it will be time to bring in the artichokes and take starts off the tomatoes (which have flowered, but not fruited). It's also time to start working on the raised beds I want to prepare for next year.

The goals with the raised beds are:

elevated slightly to avoid hurting myself when weeding.
to get the plants further away from the cheatgrass and wild geraniums (that suffocated everything this year.)
to concentrate soil enrichment plans to individual beds rather than try to amend an entire garden.
implement square-foot gardening and intercropping to maximize space in each bed.
plant garlic and some winter rye as a cover crop.

Photos taken in August 2020 with my Nikon D7200.

Past issues...

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
(Buy my work at RedBubble, TeePublic, PicFair and DeviantArt.)
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