holy shiitake batman!!!

if you are following this blog, then you know about the shiitake logs. this is an update on the progress of the logs.

darry periodically soaks the logs in a baby pool if we have not had any significant rainfall.

while doing this, he found a pin-it is dead center in the photo

the whitish stuff is the actually mycelium, it is growing through the logs and on this one, it decided to fruit on it's own.

he found two pins and brought in the logs to monitor them and control the conditions.

fully grown-his first two mushrooms! we hope for a larger yield next time. keep watching for more updates.

it's indian summer, let's keep it going

we have been so lucky the last few weeks. the weather has been wonderful, not hot and not cold with many days around 68 and some sun. we've had little rain and after all of the wet weather we had earlier this year, it was a nice break. as of today, we still have not had a true hard frost and our garden is still producing lettuce, greens of all kinds, peas and the cauliflower will hopefully produce heads soon too.

here's a look at what is still going on in the yard:

my crazy christmas cactus is always covered in blooms before thanksgiving!

they are so pretty while they last

this pineapple sage is still going strong and if the bees are out, they flock to it.

the moss is filling in the patio nicely

as the season progresses, i will fill in the gaps

the leaves are finally in the corral, or near it if you want to be technical

sugar bear is growing her winter coat and she looks a little plump, but it is all fur!

our new bell by the back door

leafing it up again...

it's that time again...i'm sad to see the summer go but then again, it wasn't much this year. we had so much rain and cool weather that it never really felt like summer to me. now we move on to fall and all of the fun tasks it brings. what would that be you ask, in a word, leaves. we collect them all every year and use them for composting and mulching.

after 5 years of doing this by hand on a 2/3acre lot, we broke down and bought a blower/mulcher/vac to aid in the process. here is darry blowing the leaves into a pile so i can begin raking them up. most of the leaves he is blowing aren't from our trees. this gully is part of the storm drain system that runs through our neighborhood and leaves from the trees across the street seem to collect here. while it is annoying to have to clean up some other person's leaves, we get to keep them and compost them.

we still have to get them to the corral and we use a barrel to do it

darry's new toy. we wanted one of the back pack models but just couldn't pay the $300 it would have cost us.

the long walk uphill to the corral. look for the soccer net in the top right corner, the corral is right next to it.

the leaf corral

the compost pile. we use open pits and we have 4 different stages going at once. this is the first stage and we cover it with the leaves that we collect. consider composting leaves for your garden, it beats sending them to the land fill!!!

looky looky, they're heeere...

its our own field of dreams story. we planted a butterfly weed plant (asclepia tuberosa) in the hope of attracting monarchs. what a joy it was to walk outside and see two, three or four of them fluttering around the plant and stopping for nectar and apparently more...

we have had multiple caterpillars so we know now that those butterflies did more than just flutterby, they made more butterflies!

oh so pretty!

when we went to florida last month, we wandered around pensacola and saw the largest crepe myrtles ever! to get an idea of how big those trunks are, look at the next photo

the trunks are larger than a fire hydrant and they are single trunks. most crepe myrtles are multiple trunks growing in a cluster. not these!

one of our favorite finds was the garden gate, 3268 fordham parkway in gulf breeze (FL). the little house is very inviting and the owner/staff are some of the nicest people we have met. they spent so much time with us answering all of our questions, showing us many plants and helping us to decide what to buy so we would have success with it in our garden.

so many beautiful plants to choose from!

more plants to check out

a funky mushroom in a fruit trees pot. we finally settled on a goldenrod and an iron weed for the big border bed we are building and a small selaginella (golden fern) for the front shade bed.

my beautiful roselle plant.

a close up of the roselle

wow-what a show the basil is putting on in the temporary bed!

the whole bed is bursting with herbs

they are hard to see but if you look closely at the rock, at about 10 oclock you will see the ironweed in the patch of dirt that touches the rock and at about 1 oclock is the goldenrod. these are the plants we bought on our trip. the little group is part of a larger bed that will eventually make a border between our yard and the idiot next door who will not mow his yard.

another cluster of plants and an interesting tree stump that are part of the border garden

just walkin' the dog

on occasion, darry laments the fact that he is no longer a part of the trendy food scene. he has worked in many top notch restaurants, hotels and country clubs where the food must be of the current trends and fads or classically prepared from high end ingredients. however, he is reminded somewhat frequently of why he left that scene; scheduling and benefits. this was the case on labor day when we had a not so frequent monday morning together. what did we do with that opportunity? not much, we just took the time to enjoy a quiet and lazy day together, reading the morning paper with a cup of coffee and then walking the dog the long way around the neighborhood. we live in an old neighborhood, no new development in the last 20 years and it is right next to the nashville zoo.

pretty little flowers growing along the road, some call them weeds but i want some in my yard in the new wild flower border we are building.

persimmons on a tree by the road, we can't tell of ours have fruit but several in the neighborhood are loaded.

one of the treats of living by the zoo, seeing the giraffes as they walk from their house to the display area. look closely in the center of the photo and you will see one.

there goes another, they have 2 males and 1 female. they are all masai giraffes.

here you can see two of them walking

this one spotted us, most likely he picked up the scent of our dog

sometimes, they get confused and return to the house rather than go on to the display area. that meant we were able to see two of them up close at the same time.

heading the wrong way again!

it's falling and i can't stop it...

it's labor day weekend and that must mean summer is over...living in the south means that we should have at least another 6-8 weeks of warm weather, warm enough that plants will continue growing and producing and coats will not be required to work in the garden. i like fall; the smells, the crispness to the air, the colors and the lack of high heat/humidity. even so, i will miss summer and i will wait patiently for it to return.

this summer we finally built our patio. we did it real cheap; free stones from a stone yard that manufactures architectural stones and moss plugs from our own back yard. now all we need is some outdoor dining furniture.

a preying mantis in the perilla plant in the herb bed

thai roselle plant, it is a member of the hibiscus family. if you are a fan of herbal teas, that big red calyx is what is used when hibiscus is added to teas.

nasturtiums and lemon verbena in the herb bed

our little fig tree has a little fig!

the little fig tree has more than doubled in size this year and we will most likely get a bunch of figs next year, i can't wait!

the bed out front has really filled in nicely. i like the morning glories that are growing on the metal bed frame better than last year's cardinal climbers.

now that fall is approaching, the flowers last longer into the day and i get to see them more.

our petunias and yellow flowers in the bed