I present to you BABY PEARS

from the luscious pear tree






from the summercrisp pear tree






from the parker pear tree




the 4th tree, the patten pear tree is a year behind these three, smaller and sparser. it has no pears this year.

garden photos

with all the rain we've gotten, i havent had to water my garden once in may or june. that has never happened before! but the rain turned many things yellow for a while. beans and melons especially. luckily we've started having some sunshine during the days to help dry things out in between all the rain.

tomatoes


watermelon in a cold frame


watermelon NOT in a cold frame, much farther behind in growing.


cantalope in a cold frame


sunflowers


zucchini


potatoes


brussels sprouts and cauliflower


green beans


black eyed peas


raised bed garden, carrots, radishes, lettuce, rutabaga


strawberry patch


raspberries and molly


raspberries are so tall they come up to my shoulders!

cedar apple rust

This is a gall, caused by the fungus Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae. Galls appear when an insect or fungus feeds off of a plant and somehow changes the plant's structure, causing it to produce abnormal growths, inside of which the insect or fungus then lives. Those "tentacles" are actually the spore-producing appendages of the fungus inside the gall.









It can defoliate trees and blemish fruit making them unmarketable. The CAR fungus requires two hosts, apple and eastern red cedar. it makes spots on the leaves of apple trees AND pear trees very much like the spots i've been having trouble with on the summercrisp and patten trees.

treatment seems to be sulfer. but is supposed to be applied when the blossoms are open and that has passed.

purely for amusement

from the new star trek movie

new pictures of the baby pear trees. 4 years old now i believe.

pear trees:

luscious


parker


summercrisp


patten



the neighbor across the street has a huge pear tree too! bottom half


top half

sweetpea

put a new bin of green stuff into sweetpeas enclosure. she promptly plowed thru half of it and THEN started eating. but at least she's figured out its food and isnt trampling it all anymore.



see the leave sticking out the left side of her mouth? nom nom nom

repairing the hole in the ceiling/replacing the access panel

i've got all the pieces to repair the hole/access panel in the basement bathroom ceiling where the outside hose/water shut off valve hides. i had to have the valve replaced last fall and the plumber had to enlarge the hole to replace the valve. so the previous access panel was trash.

my dad helped me figure out a new way to cover the hole and still allow access twice a year to turn it off and on. he cut a length of wood to have a lip on it. i cut that piece into two pieces and cut a 1/4" plywood piece to size for the sliding panel. i finished painting the boards yesterday. today i installed them.

the hole


tools and parts. you can see the two L-shaped pieces that will allow the panel to slide in and out.


sliding the panel in place (i could not get my camera to focus to save my soul)


new access panel (still couldnt get my camera to focus)



unfortunately the new valve seems to be leaking since opening it up for the summer. i dont think the soldierjoint is perfect enough on the right side of the valve where it connects to pipe and heads outside. guess i got another project now. it *should* have been done right the first time. though admittedly it spent the winter being shut off and being fine. and it was a very difficult place for the plumber to access.