Sky, Desert, Mountains, Plains:

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Miss Kitty in "Why gro lite not make me big tigr?" on www.icanhascheezburger.com.

We installed some of our ourdoor plants in our bedroom with a plant light to get them through the winter, not realizing that we were providing Miss Kitty with yet another cat toy.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Dave and I found this pretty green beetle in our garden today, and Dave just had to get a picture of it. Anyone know what it is? Hopefully, it's not something that will harm our plants.

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Our Japanese eggplant is coming along nicely; it's been growing pretty purple flowers, which I hope will soon develop into long purple eggplants.

Today we found another southwestern fence lizard hanging out among our squash, sunbathing on the rocks. The yellow patches on the skin suggest that this is a pregant female.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Dave needed to finish up a roll of film in his 35mm camera (in order to get the Grand Canyon pictures developed) so he took a few more garden pictures. Here are our tomatillos in June, our thai pepper plant, a close up of a thai pepper, and one of our sunflowers.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

With the highs in the 100s now, we have to water the plants twice a day. I do the morning watering, and Dave does the afternoon watering. This morning, while watering the squash, I startled a lizard out of the garden onto the fence. Once out of the way of the stream of water, the lizard remained still and Dave got a few decent pics. Turns out it's called a southwestern fence lizard, appropriately enough. Here's another picture of the same lizard, taken with Dave's 35mm camera.

June 2006

We have been able to grow an amazing array of vegetables and herbs in our yard here in Arizona, though we have yet to see whether it will all survive the heat of summer. We started gardening seriously back in March and April, some plants from seed and some purchased at a local nursery.

Our garden is divided into many pots as well as two beds in the unforgiving Arizona soil, which Dave had to laborously dig loose and clear of the largest rocks before planting. Our first bed has patty pan squash, zucchini squash, cucumbers, and beans. Our second bed has sunflowers and morning glory, which we hope to train to climb up some poles in the corner of our yard. We have even more plants growing in pots: Three kinds of tomatoes (celebrity, cherry, and roma), tomatillos, serrano peppers, thai peppers, chinese eggplant, strawberries, green garlic, fennel, dill, rosemary, french thyme, lemon thyme, tarragon, epazote, spearmint, peppermint, sweet basil, thai basil, oregano, italian parsley, a tiny lemon sprout, and an avocado pit we are still hoping may someday show signs of life.