July 2

We are in full summer. The heat has not come yet as expected, lately the high has been near 75 each day which makes for pleasant days.

The peas have really developed in the last couple days and we officially have peas coming out of our ears. The plants have stretched about 3 feet high, a little higher than the fencing I put up for them. Other things we can pick and harvest at liberty - cilantro, lettuce, spinach, radishes, arugula, dill, parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, green onions, chives. We have one large head of broccoli developing.

The cucumbers will start vining soon. The second planting I put in has done well and is catching up to the older plants.
Cherry tomatoes have started to put out green fruit. All tomato plants have flowers now. The peppers in the last two weeks have really sprouted, and some of them have flowers.

Our roses have been blooming for the past week, since my birthday. The raspberry canes are full of small, green, hard berries. A couple of very early ripe ones have shown up here and there. The blackberries are likewise full of white flowers and tiny, hard, seedy green berries.

The plum tree usually has a "junedrop" where it loses a lot of plums, which is a known occurence. For whatever reason this year it has dropped a couple, but has hung onto a lot. I put some fertilizer spikes around it earlier this year, maybe that's made some difference.

The petunia, salvia, etc are all blooming and doing well, as are the butterfly bushes in the front. We have some very dark red cherries, more than we've ever had, in the cherry trees in the front. All of the daisies have opened up as well. The side of the roads are covered in purple aster flowers.

After another planting of corn was nibbled through by animals, I've given up. I'll have two nice plantings of sweet corn, after attempting 4 total. There is another planting of indian corn doing OK.

The beans all have flowers but not fruit yet. The pole beans have found their trellis and are wrapping around up the poles. Some of them are 3 to 4 feet off the ground at this point.

Some potatoes have flowered, but the plants are doing well. Haven't had any need to water yet.

We went to Devil's Lake state park for the weekend. The period of daily thunderstorms has passed. There are many wildflowers present. We also found some wild strawberries which I have not had in a while. You could see the foliage from the bluffs around the top of the lake of the surrounding lands. It was beautiful, all of the trees are green and filled in. You could see patches and groves of pine trees among all of the maple, oak, elm, aspen, and other deciduous species. At one point on top of the bluff a sandhill crane flew overhead.