Empty Nest

Noooo!!!  My baby birds are gone!!!  They finally left the nest today and I didn't even get to say goodbye.  I can hear them chirping in the trees outside the fence, but they won't show their little faces.  I saw mama bird, but she yelled at me to go away.  I hope they all survive their flight training and come back to visit us.  I left out the last of the mealworms so they can have a snack for the road.  Now the only baby I have left is my loud-mouthed beagle.

Here are the last couple pictures I took of the babies, and they don't really look like babies anymore.  They've inherited their mother's evil glare.

Bird Food

We bought some mealworms for the wrens to eat.  They're pretty gross.

We've spotted some other birds trying to steal the worms and I've had to run outside and yell at them.  I'm not trying to feed all the neighborhood birds!  But I think mama and daddy bird are getting most of them, especially since the babies don't really look like babies anymore.  They look like that dancing penguin from Happy Feet... they're almost full grown but they've still got a lot of baby fuzz.

Every time I go out on my porch, mama and daddy bird pop out and start chirping at me, like I'm not allowed on my own porch!  It's not like I'm the reason their babies have a home and free food...

The birds have opened their eyes

The baby birds are getting so fuzzy and cute!  They've finally opened their eyes and they're begging for food.  You can clearly see four hungry little beaks in there!  I'm glad all of the eggs hatched and have made it so far.

Veggie Soup

Something has been getting into my tomatoes!  It doesn't look like worms and I never see squirrels or chipmunks back here, so I think it's a bird pecking into the ripe tomatoes.  That bird has already ruined at least half a dozen perfectly good tomatoes!

My two pepper plants are growing crazy slow, but the green peppers and banana peppers that have been growing one or two at a time have been getting huge!  I finally picked my first green pepper today and it's way more impressive than the little ones I was growing last summer.

I'm going to slice it up with some of my tomatoes and cook a homemade pizza.  BEST way to eat homegrown green peppers!  We cooked about a dozen little roma tomatoes today in a vegetable soup with a zucchini, a squash, a sweet onion, a bunch of little creamer potatoes, and carrots in beef broth.  We boiled the tomatoes for 30 seconds, then threw them in some icy water, and the peels came right off!  We had never done that before and it was really cool.  Todd even started the soup with a roux!  (Paisley pronounces it aahhhrrooooooo!!)

So the tomatoes are growing great and the plant is as tall as I am!  Well, technically it's only as tall as me when I hold the tallest branch up, but it's still impressive.

Baby Birds: Day 4

The Wrens Hatched!

The baby wrens hatched over the weekend!  I peeked into the nest today when mama and daddy bird were out finding food.  They're super fresh, so they look pretty gross right now, but they should be big enough to leave the nest in the next two weeks.

I didn't get the greatest picture, but I was scared that mama bird was going to come back and get mad.  Maybe I should buy them a container of worms as a late baby shower gift, haha.

Mama bird gave me the evil eye

This bird is terrifying.  She was so mad at me for trying to take her picture.  I felt like she was staring into my soul... and I was scared.  I don't want to disturb her, but I want to see her babies!  How long will I have to wait before they hatch?!

I dare you to look into these eyes and not be scared too.

First banana peppers!

I resisted as long as I could, but I went ahead and cut my first two banana peppers off the plant today.  I wanted to see if they would get any larger, but I think they're making it hard for my other banana pepper buds to grow.  Here are all my peppers before:

And here are my banana peppers after:

It took about a month for them to grow to 4" and 5" long (or 5" and 6" if you measure along the outside curve).  My bell pepper is not quite 3" yet, so I'm going to let that one keep growing a bit longer.  Some of my tomatoes don't have that much longer to grow - I'm going to be able to pick 2 or 3 of them in the next day or so!  There are a lot more that size, so I'm sure a bunch will start ripening up soon.

Who's garden is this anyway?

For the past couple weeks, I've been keeping an eye out for my little lizard friend to return.  He was the best garden tenant!  But I found a different tenant living in my garden today.

First of all, let me remind you of my fabric hanging planter that I made earlier this summer:

This morning, I went to water the flowers in this fabric planter and a bird flew out!  I thought it was going to fly right into my face, but instead, it landed on one of the fence posts and proceeded to CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP at me.  I was about to go on and continue my mission of watering the flowers, but then I realized that this furious bird must be a mama bird, and I was right.  That crazy mama made a nest out of my flowers!  Even though she was chirping and yelling and throwing a fit, I had to peak into the fabric planter just long enough to make sure there were some eggs in there (and get a picture, of course).  This is what I saw:

She had 4 speckled eggs in there!  Good thing I heard her chirping at me before I went ahead and watered the flowers.  That would have been a sad, soggy nest.  I might have to sacrifice these flowers since this bird family has obviously settled in good.  That's fine as long as that mama bird stops flying at my face and yelling at me!  I never had these problems with my lizard friend...

I didn't mean to grow a snowman

My tomato plant is getting huge!  Look at how tall it is now:

And it's covered in tomatoes from top to bottom:

This is the oldest bunch, the largest of which is about 1 and a half inches long:

Look at that tomato on the left.  It's a snowman!  Or maybe a tomato-man.  Either way, it's weird.

The tomato-man isn't the problem, though.  The problem is that a couple of the tomatoes in this bunch had blossom-end rot.  Lame!  I need to start giving them tomato food and make sure I water them on a more regular basis.  I blame grad school.

I grew my first banana pepper!

I went away for the weekend and my two largest banana peppers blew up!

This is the oldest banana pepper.  It's hard to tell the difference between the bell pepper buds and banana pepper buds in my older pictures, but I believe this banana pepper first opened its flower and started growing about 3 weeks ago.  Now it's about 3 and a half or 4 inches long.

 Since I've never grown banana peppers before, I'm not sure how long I should wait before I pick them.  Anyone know?

And here are my bell peppers!  They're still only about 2 inches long and the bottom one is growing crazy shaped.

Hanging Planter Labels

I just made the cutest labels for my hanging planters!!  Last summer, we wrote the name of each plant in sharpie on the front side of the milk container and it lasted for the entire growing season.  But this summer, for some reason, the sharpie washed off after only a few days.  I decided to make some labels that are cute and hopefully durable and weatherproof.  Check them out:

What I did was take one of those 9 by 13 aluminum baking pans and write/engrave the name of each plant with a pen.  I took a box cutter and cut a square around each plant name, and then I took some pliers and folded the edges back so no one could get cut.  I went over the engraved names with sharpie so they stood out more and covered the front in a layer of packing tape to protect the sharpie from washing away again.  The last thing I did was use a single-hole punch, thread some twine, and tie them to my hanging planters.  They look so good!  I hope they last all season.  (Also, see the end of this post for an update on how my plants are doing!)

Baby fruit update:
     - I have at least 9 baby tomatoes and the biggest is already the size of a grape!
     - I have 1 baby bell pepper, but it's so tiny, the flower petals are still around it.
     - I have 1 open flower on the banana pepper plant that should show fruit soon.
     - I have 3 baby zucchinis!  The largest is only about an inch long.

Red, White, and Blue

I made a beautiful arrangement in my window box!  I didn't mean for it to be so patriotic, but I guess it is heading toward that time of year.

I reused my little yellow bucket from last summer for some of the extra flowers.

I sat outside and read for a couple hours this morning and I was surrounded by flowers near my veggies, flowers on the table, and flowers hanging in my fabric planter.  It was so nice!

Planting SEads for the Second Summer

I'm back in business for my second attempt at growing a mini vegetable garden!  Last summer, I grew 2 roma tomato plants, 1 cherry tomato plant, 2 bell pepper plants, 1 jalapeno plant, and 1 unsuccessful zucchini plant.  That was a lot for me to keep up with, so this summer, I'm taking a step down and only growing 4 plants.  I'm growing the bell peppers again, but this time I only have 1 plant so none of them go to waste.  I'm doing the same thing with my roma tomatoes, but this time I'm growing it in a planter on the ground instead of in a hanger.  I was most excited about my zucchini plant last year, so I'm trying again in hopes that it will properly fruit this time.  The last one is a banana pepper plant (sweet and mild rather than spicy), which I'm trying instead of jalapenos this year.  The jalapenos grew the easiest out of all my plants last summer, but I just couldn't keep up with it and I hate to let any of my veggies go to waste.

I got the plants 3 weekends ago, and once I brought them home and put them in the planters, here's what the set-up looked like.  The tomato plant is in the planter on the ground, and the hanging planters from left to right are the zucchini plant, the bell pepper plant, and the banana pepper plant.

And here's a close-up of my baby roma tomato plant:

3 weeks later, here's what the plants look like:

And this is what my cute little roma tomato plant has grown into:

I finally had a break from homework today and was able to go pick up a tomato cage from Lowes.  I know I should have done it a couple weeks ago (before my tomato plant turned into a monster!), but I'll get it to work.

This is the most exciting part... I have baby zucchinis growing already!!  They're pretty tiny, but you can definitely see a couple thick stems that are definitely the beginning of a little fruit.  I'm so excited!  Check out these zucchini babies:

Maybe that only excites me, but you have no idea how badly I wanted some homegrown zucchinis last year!  It better work this time.

I'm also growing flowers!  I just got my window box and my little yellow bucket set up today after my trip to Lowes, so I'll get pics of that tomorrow.