Pinto beans, wildlife - the turtles and the bees?

Pinto Bean Harvest

The pinto beans were in a patch that was flooded and partially washed out, not to mention attacked by rabbits (and a groundhog, perhaps), and overgrown with weeds (I was able to cultivate it ONCE - it was too wet the rest of the time).  Anyway, I had to go in and pick what beans I could find.  I was able to harvest probably 8-10 lbs of beans!  Not bad considering the situation.

Filled in around porch

I moved and leveled the porch last weekend, but there were gaps around the house and base of the porch that I wanted to fill in with dirt.  This weekend I got a couple of front-end-loaders full of dirt and fill in a bit.

There was a hole on this side - in the corner next to the house, that I am pretty sure a groundhog had been using (or had plans to use) for a den.  I wanted to shut down such a bad idea.

European Hornets

I was in the kitchen when I noticed this guy on the kitchen screen door.  These guys are all over the pears and apples!  I need to figure out how to eradicate them!  They are eating a significant amount of fruit and they are quite disturbing.

They are about twice the size of a regular bald-faced hornet!  Thankfully, they seem to be relatively docile.

Turtles!

I caught these two doing this outside!  Such naughty turtles! LoL

More summer squash!

Yep, well into fall now - but the summer squash are doing fine!  Will this be the last harvest?   The plants are looking pretty rough...

Winter squash (buttercup) are doing fine

There some decent looking squash coming on.    Wouldn't have minded a few more - but maybe there are enough...

Confused Forsythia

I discovered a number of forsythia that were putting out blooms!  They normally bloom in the spring.  Weirdness.

Pinto bean picking continues

It goes slow with all these weeds!  Hard to even see the beans in there.

More mulch! Things are growing!

Wow, Big mulch Pile!

The first thing I noticed when I pulled up this weekend was the HUGE pile of mulch the trimmer guys had left for me!  WOW!  Thanks guys!  I used the front loader on my tractor to heap this up so it would mulch better (and give me room on the driveway).  This stuff will come in handy.   By the way, it gets SUPER hot in these piles!

Free wood chips! Yay!

Here it is all squished together - quite a pile!

Confused turtle again

This little one keeps getting lost around the side of the house and then waylaid by the dog fence!  I moved him down below the house (just about 15 feet - not too far) so he could get to the woods and stream on the other side.

They can run much faster than you would think!

Stuff is coming up in the gardens!

The corn in the front patch is coming up!  Its sparse in some areas - but that may be because of old seed (and sometimes the planting machine gets finicky).

The beans are mostly up now too!

They are a little sparse on the left side though - did a critter get in and eat them off?  Or is it because its partially shaded there?  I put some chicken mesh around the base of the garden fence to stop the critter issues...

Raspberries are blooming!

They are growing quite well too.  Hopefully I will get some good berries off this!

Mulched the "old" blueberries

I trimmed around the "old" blueberries and then applied mulch.  They look much better now and I shouldn't have to trim around them so much with all of that mulch!

Garden progress

The tomatoes and the cabbages and broccoli are coming along.  The cabbages and broccoli look like they need some sevin!  I think I did put sevin dust on these before I left.

See the holes in the leaves?  BUGS!

Cabbages, broccoli, blooming stuff

Cabbages and Broccoli planted

They are a bit rough for wear, but I really don't care how they do.  Cabbage is good when fresh or canned into sauerkraut, but how much sauerkraut can you eat?  Of course, I cold try the root cellar approach, but I will need to get moving on that project and its just not likely this year.

I actually don't know which plant is which!  I might have planted mostly cabbage or mostly broccoli!

Grapes

The grapes are blooming!  Well, they are starting to.  Lots of blossoms about to break open.  I did find quite a bit of black rot on the grape vines though.  Not surprising since its been so wet this year. I need to get out there and spray!

These are blossoms that haven't come out yet

This is black rot!  Ugh.  

On quite a few of the leaves.

This stuff can really wipe out your grapes - especially young ones like these

As if the black rot weren't bad enough, the friggen deer have been chowing down on the new grape shoots!   I really like not having the electric fence up and in my way mowing so I am looking into trying some deer repellent spray.

Here you can see where the tips of the plant have been clipped off

The deer trimmed this whole plant!

I hope these recover!

Peaches

The peaches are doing ok.  It is about time for them to start the "June Drop" though.  I am crossing my fingers that I don't loose too many!  This is the first year that I should be letting them reach maturity.

As you can see, some are dropping already!

Strawberries

Still coming in!  I am lazy and didn't take pictures of all of them.  They all look the same!  I think I got another gallon and a half this weekend.

Box Turtle

This box turtle showed up (again?) this year.  I assume its the same one we have been seeing around here, but I didn't mark it and I am no good at telling one turtle from another.

Elderberries

The elderberries are blooming!  Yay!  Oh man, where am I going to store all these things when they are ripe?  I have got to get the freeze-dryer ready!