The Farm Report 7-26-2018: Shake Your Tail Feathers and Show Me Your Melons!

The Farm Report 7-26-2018: Shake your tail feathers, and show me your melons!

Baby! Shake your tail feathers and show me your melons! Did I make you grin? The 5 new replacement recruites are growing like weeds. We think one, the little black one, is probably going to be a rooster. See his little tail feathers? Nobody else in the platoon has 'em. So.....

Meanwhile, out in the melon patch...the girl blossoms finally showed up, and we have little melons! We have musk melons - or cantaloupes if you're not from here - growing well hidden in the vines. The little Crimson Sweet watermelons are out in the open mostly. The musk melons are 'Papa's Melons' - a seed reportedly from my Great Grandfather Myron Inman's collection. We've grown 'em for generations and they are still unbeatable for flavor.

Up in the bee yard, things are looking a little 'needy' this year. Hive Number 2 pretty much says it all. Unlike the leaning tower of Pizza, we have straightened it up and hope for a better year next year. 

The mornings are now bringing what Joyce always called 'Chinese Mornings' because she thought the Walnut Creek Valley looked like the misty paintings on the walls in Chinese restaurants when the morning fogs settled in. A sign of the changing seasons. Time to pull the onions.

I've added this long shot of the onion row to make a point. Pretty gardens are for magazines. When things are ripening, and the seasons are beginning to grow whiskers, the garden doesn't look nice - but to be sure, it is still a productive patch!

And, we're still battling the dread Japanese Beetle. Harry Truman and Winston Churchill, among others, are often credited with the quote that 'History is just one damned thing after another.' Well so it is with the Japanese Beetles. One story about Bess Truman suggests that when a friend asked her if she could please get Harry to say 'fertilizer' instead of 'manure' she responded by telling her friend it had taken her 25 years to get him to say 'manure.' So when I saw the beetle damage on my sweet corn silks, I thought, Harry was right, it is indeed one thing after another. 

But when I saw the beetles on Joyce's Roses, I sure as the world didn't say, 'Aw fertilizer.' I didn't say, 'Aw manure,' either. 'Aw, $%&* !' is what I said. Out loud and on purpose. So I've turned in my Organic Farming card and resorted to the tried and true. You have to fight for everything out here - or you won't have anything.

O.J. assures me that it isn't good to be upset all the time. The world is still round, and all will be well in the end. Chad's flowers are doing great, and so am I. 'till next time...Try to remember to say 'fertilizer' - when it happens.