I really love that awkward phase! Their adult colors start coming in, and they're super adventurous.
[Image description: the white and pink flowers of a black lace elderberry peek out from underneath the dark purple leaves]
I'm very hopeful that I will get some seeds from it this year, it would be awesome to grow it out to see how the genetics play out.
[Image description: a top down photo of thirteen muscovy ducklings standing in a block, with one duckling off to the side. Each duckling has a different color pattern, with shades of yellow, brown, and grey showing]
I've never had a clutch of ducklings line up so nicely before
Coleus amboinicus -> Plectranthus amboinicus and I'm back to having no coleus, I'll never forgive
So I didn't spot any other girls frequenting the greenhouse, which leads me to believe they could all be hers. Our two boys are 'chocolate' and 'pied', so with her 'pied' genetics they could all be hers and the colors might be crazy.
Generally speaking the yellow bits will be light and the brown parts will be black or brown, with browns and sometimes green or an iridescent purple being kore common on the yellow ducklings.
She bit me a little but a few of them weren't hand shy at all and I scritched a few duckling bellies today
[Image description: fourteen muscovy ducklings, each a mix of yellow and brown fluff, rest in the grass under the watchful gaze of their mother]
600G of strawberries retails for £4.50 (Tesco). If this whole setup cost only a million pounds, a producer would have to grow 133,333,332G worth of strawberries to pay it off, and this assumes nothing breaks (ever) and that there is some way to harvest that many strawberries without paying labor, packaging, licensing, and other costs. I feel like this was a cool tech demo but that's about it
We've grown butternut and pumpkins on trellising with no significant weight issues - one or two huge guys that I cut off to cure elsewhere while the others kept growing, sure. If you're doing cukes, zukes, or other summer or small squash you should be good to go though.
I'm so glad the exclusion barrier is working for your squashes! Can you train them up some trellising with any sort of ease?
I think that whst I thought were Brussel sprouts are actually cucumber, and what I thought was cucumber is Brussel sprouts so neither is where I wanted them
Oh no ......
I am stunned by how crisp those hoverflies in the photo are! And those lovage flowers are spectacular
I mean this as constructively as possible: that's not a composting toilet and the practice you've described raises health risks for you and the people to whom you give food.
I usually prefer non-human animal manures for that sort of thing. Are you using a composting toilet or some other mechanism to reduce pathogenic potential?
[Image description: a blue merle Australian shepherd looks to the left of the camera with wide eyes and perked ears. The background is a black, orange, and red hexagon blanket and blue curtains]
That is a good morning!
[Image description: A blue merle Australian shepherd lounges on the grass in the shade next to a rhubarb leaf that is the same size as him]
[Image description: a disc of white flowers sits atop a stem of elderberry, Sambucus canadensis]
As of mid day, imgur (on mobile) no longer provides the direct image link to allow for mirroring on Beehaw using .
I always try to upload directly first, but tend to share pictures at the same quality I'm using for our business - which is to say at the highest quality image my device can capture. Those images rarely play nice with pictrs limitations so hosting elsewhere and mirroring are the best way for me to post plant and animal photos I take, and provide the best fidelity so others can enjoy them.
So, do folks have some suggestions for other image hosting that would let me accomplish this easily (I'm not particularly tech savvy)? Do I need to just spin up a pixelfed account and mirror/crosspost? I'd love for you to share your thoughts
I'm still waiting on my Pycnanthemum muticum, clustered mountain mint, to germinate. But in more positive news I was allowed to take a cutting of Monarda bradburiana, spotted bee balm, home with me yesterday.
What's growing on with you all?
Edited to add an image of the bee balm:
[Image description: our nine month old gets to feel a pig's back while I hold her over the pen wall]
The town library hosted a meet-the-animals event with a vet tech explaining how to recognize and respect animals' interaction thresholds. The bunnies and chickens were old news for Juniper, but the pigs were fascinating after some early skepticism.
I pulled garlic scapes the other day, and our strawberries have been coming in gangbusters. The blackberries are just past full bloom, the raspberries are right behind them, and the elderberries look like they're going to go hard.
Blackberries:
Elder:
The front walkway (it needs some weeding)
What's growing on with you all?
My friend at the library asked this morning if I wanted to take home a hosta that someone donated to the plant sale without a pot, as she didn't have the capacity to split it into pots or spend multiple watering sessions keeping it happy. Being the good husband I am, I asked my wife if it's okay with her if I accepted (unapologetic plant accepter here). She said sure, and even understood when I said I needed to bring the truck because it had no pot and I didn't want to dirty her car.
The hosta:
My wife:
There are something like twelve common names in english, it was introduced to me as "oregano brujo" (wizard's oregano). It's most strongly oregano in its aerosol phenols but when I've used it in meals (usually in a slow cooker) it's got notes of the thymol that come through.