The End Is Near...the End of Summer That Is

Three weeks of summer remain. The vegetables in the garden keep coming, although we still await chiles and eggplant and red tomatoes.  Here's some of the summer bounty I picked yesterday:

We have had so many veggies and herbs from my tiny little garden that most of it has been given away. 
Corn has been sweet and we shared only a little with the catapillars. I don't spray any of my veggies with insecticide.  Bugs are really not a problem, the lizards and birds seem to take care of them.



Cucumbers

  My daughter, Amanda, had fun picking vegetables and "posing" as my little farmer girl in my little mountain garden.



Picking Yellow Squash



I actually harvested corn from my garden this summer

This summer, I led four Wildflower Interpretive Walks as a volunteer for the Forest Service. They were on the Crest Trail (North and South), Tecolote Trail and Tree Spring Trail in the Sandia Mountains.  The people I met were terrific and many complimented me on an informative walk although I was pretty nervous about my knowledge initially. Pearl Burns, my teacher, went along on two of them and provided me with her evaluation.  I went on my last 2010 wildflower walk last Saturday.  Pearl Burns led this one along Juan Tomas Rd. off South 14 in the Manzanita Mountains.  Here are some of the flowers we saw:

Poison Milkweed

Annual Sunflower

Verbena (above) and Many-flowered Gilia (below)

Milkwort

Fringed Sage

False Boneset

Hoarhound

Narrow-leaf Four O'Clock

Pearl Burns with Wooly Mullein

Small-flowered Guara

Cota or Rio Grande Greenthread

Blue Flax

Crest-Rib Morning Glory

Flower of Ground Cherry          

Fruit of Ground Cherry

Noseburn

Yellow Ragweed or Bahia

White Heath Aster

Rocky Mountain Sage

Toothed Poinsettia

Wild Licorice

Short-rayed Coneflower

Tall Easter or Townsend's Daisy

Townsend's Daisy bracts

Purple Geranium

Santa Fe Phlox

Spike Verbena

Summer is almost past.  The cool, clear days of Fall will soon be here.  We installed a new wood stove and soon will need to purchase firewood from one of the wood-haulers that line the roads in the Fall.  I'm looking forward to Winter this year with the help of a good wood stove to warm the house.

Our new wood stove in the living room