P_I_C_T_U_R_E_S OF MY K_I_D_S

No this blog isn't about to go all personal with family pictures. But we have kids! Pygmy goat kids, that is.

We picked them up Sunday and then, instead of getting to work with them on their social skills I had to leave town for a few days. Younger daughter obligingly sent me these photos. She reports that they are learning to walk nicely on leash, that they have learned that a white plastic bucket contains yummy grain, and that they go to bed without fussing.

Bracken just turned 1 year old, so she's ready to be bred, if we can find her a baby daddy.


Bramble is 5 months old, and full of the dickens, but oh, so cute.

The Great Pumcchini

Last year a volunteer pumpkin plant sprang up next to the compost pile. Clearly my compost doesn't heat up properly because those seeds must have lain there for a long time. I had not grown or purchased pumpkins in a couple of years. Even better, the pumpkins were fantastic--about 10" diameter, thick flesh that was sweet and not at all stringy. I made pumpkin soup, pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread and still have two containers of pulp in the freezer. Which is a good thing, because. . .

I saved the seeds from the best of the pumpkins of course. I was on to something here--a sweet eating pumpkin that could thrive in my cold-soil garden. In an homage to Territorial Seed Company's "We don't know what the heck we ended up with so we'll call it Wild Garden Whatever and sell it to you at a fancy price" I called it "Molly's Wild Garden Pumpkin". Shared the seed with my sister. We both got fine healthy plants. Hers, having the benefit of warmer weather, set fruit first. I get a phone call.

"What are those pumpkins supposed to look like?"
"Oh, they're kind of squat, not at all like jack-o-lantern types."
"Well, mine look an awful lot like zucchini!"

Ooops. Gotta' love those bees! I wandered out to take a closer look at my plants. All the vigor of the original pumpkin plant was there in the huge leaves, but with the tell-tale silvery splotches of the zucchini I grew last year. And at the base of the first female blossom, a fruit that looked like a short, fat, green zucchini. Genes are funny things. Those were yellow zucchini I grew last year.

I thought I already had plenty of zucchini plants already, so I pulled out all but two of the zupkins to give more growing space to the winter squash. Also one of the zumpchinis had plain green leaves and looked to be setting round fruit.

Two months later the round fruit are clearly a cross between one of the varieties of winter squash I grew last year, Delicata, and the pumpkin. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the flavor is somewhere in between the two. The zumpkins are simply amazing. The blossoms are easily 9"-10" across, all the better to lure in the bees, I'm sure. The squash never get more than about 9" long and about 4" in diameter. And even when they get that big, there isn't a trace of bitterness to them. I'd been throwing the big ones to the chickens but last week I wanted to make a chocolate zucchini cake, so I brought one into the house. I'm thinking I'll let one of them get ripe and save the seeds.

Oh, about the chocolate zucchini cake. Best use of oversized zucchini ever. I had intended to use Inland Empire Girl's recipe but it would have required a trip to the store for buttermilk, so I used this one from the appropriately-named Chocolate and Zucchini blog. Don't worry if you don't have a 3-litre springform pan. I used a 13 x 9 cake pan and it was fine, just not quite as high.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day Post for August

Update: I forgot to mention the Shasta daisies, crocosmia, and


evening primrose.

Late to the party as usual, so I'll dive right in. Of my entire dahlia collection only one has survived. Fortunately it's also my favorite, Bednall's Beauty.

A few years back I bought some hydrangeas in 2" pots from Heronswood Nursery. I didn't expect them to amount to anything for several years, especially not when a couple of them suffered severe winterkill every year. I moved a couple of them to warmer spots last fall and they've rewarded me by blooming this summer. This one has a real mouthful of a name-- Hydrangea macrophylla GartenBaudirektor Kuhnert:


Over the years this variegated hydrangea has become less variegated, both in foliage and in bloom every year. It used to have huge splashes of white on the leaves, and both pink and blue flowers. It's less flashy now, but so am I:


One of my new daylilies, Ruffled Apricot:


Rudbeckia:

Also in bloom: Coneflowers, most of the roses, gladiolus, sweet peas (finally!), nasturtiums, and calendula.