Sunday, September 1, 2024

Snapshots: Peaches!

The most exciting news first: I ate a peach from our own tree! This is a tree A. started from a peach pit and planted in the garden a few years ago. This is the first year it's ever had peaches on it, so we didn't know what kind it might be.

There are quite a few peaches on it. Unfortunately, grasshoppers really like peaches.


A pox on the peach-eating grasshoppers.

I was examining that chewed-up peach, and noticed it felt soft. So I pulled it off the tree and took a bite of the half the grasshoppers hadn't gnawed on.

And it was good! Delicious, even! These are what we call white peaches, which are very sweet and seem to be a locally adapted variety.

There are still some peaches on the tree that haven't been touched by the grasshoppers, and they should be ripe in the next week or so. Yay!

Let's see what else . . .

The contrast between the pickling cucumber vines and the Armenian cucumber vines is amusing.


The giant Armenians on the right are taking over the puny pickles on the left.

Armenian cucumbers don't taste exactly like cucumbers, but close enough. And their hardiness cannot be denied.

I got a packet of wildflower seeds during Teacher Appreciation Week at school in the spring, which I sprinkled in a garden bed near the road. There were these very fluffy plants that grew and grew and grew, but never did anything but get bigger. 


I was starting to think they were just some kind of weed when . . .


Pretty pink somethings! Anyone know what these are? They opened from something that looks like a berry on the top of the plant.

And speaking of flowers!

When we had a guest over for dinner last weekend, Poppy cleaned off her little table in the corner of the dining room and decorated it nicely for dinner (even though no one was eating there).


Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

We have no shortage of sunflowers right outside our gate.


Just waiting to be put on a table.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cosmos. They will bloom and bloom once they get started.mil

mbmom11 said...

What pretty flower! Google says it's a cosmos, built that could be wrong. (I'm big on using the search feature to identify pretty flowers and trees I see. Too many years of seed projects for my kids has left their mark.)
Glad you got peaches! We had apples on our little apple tree too - so many! But as they started ripening, the squirrels and storms took most of them. There are exactly 2 left- on high skinny branches we can't reach. Our neighbors- whose 2 apple trees produce abundantly- will loan us their apple picking tool so we can access them.

Anonymous said...

The pretty pink flower is cosmos. They reseed and come back, although it seems the ‘default’ color is orange.

Allison said...

Yes cosmos! We have them in Toronto, Canada. You’ll have more and more as the years go by. Here they are bright pink, light pink and white. Beautiful!

Karen. said...

With enough water, cosmos will take over, much like sunflowers without water. Ha. I believe the color of the flower depends on growing conditions, though I could look that up to be sure.

Anonymous said...

Wow. Had to go to Croatia to be able to reply. Your grasshopper eating peaches, yum, our fig eating birds. Used to cutting off the eaten parts. Lovely wild flowers for your girl child to be creative with. Yes, just like Mom!