Acorn bombardment, fall gardening

Folks,

The past few days and nights we have been bombarded with showers of acorns. It now takes about 2-3 days before the deck is covered in acorns.


Above is two days worth of acorns on the deck, pretty noisy when they hit the roof then bounce onto the deck.

A pile Meg swept up that we'll be piling in the woods for the deer.

Today Meg and I went to the local farmers market and stocked up on fresh veggies and greens, our CSA on Wednesday has now ended and they closed the Wednesday market too.

Down by the pond this morning I spied our local 3 point buck resting hidden in the willows by himself. Until a few weeks ago he was in the company of several does and two fawns, this was the third time I'd found him by himself down by the pond in the morning.

We cleaned up the garden and planted garlic, greens, swiss chard, spinach and kale. Before planting we filled a wheelbarrow with our homemade compost and added it to the soil. Someday that soil will be prime but it has years to get "fixed".

Dot the Wonder Dog in deep thought. She is enjoying the freshly swept deck, a hard hat is needed out there!


Meg was digging in the garden and found this Red Eft, Notophthalmus viridescens. This was the second terrestrial version of the Eastern Red-spotted Newt we have found here in paradise. Our pond has a lot of aquatic Red-spotted Newts every year.

Other creatures seen in the garden today were a Common Ground Skink, 2 Worm Snakes (they eat slugs BTW) and a Eastern Fence Lizard.

I was lucky enough to find this Marbled Orbweaver, Araneus marmoreus down by the pond this afternoon. They are my favorite spiders and I had the pleasure of watching it build its perfect web. Finally I can see the web and ID the spider before I look for it hidden in the leaves next to the web.


Above is an update on our Swamp Sunflowers, even in more bloom than the last posting. We have seen several Monarchs, Cloudless Sulphurs and an American lady visit it for nectar.

Here is our 10 foot tall Sparkleberry with lots of berries. It is I believe actually a holly. I canoed the Sparkleberry Swamp in South Carolina once many years ago and the sea of red berries really got my attention. So I bought this one at Durham Hardware many years ago, it has been closed down for a long time now. Last year Meg and I watched from 10 foot away in the screened in porch Cedar Waxwings, American Robins and Eastern Bluebirds eat all the berries in two days.

Our Cosmos is still doing well!

These tiny peppers are called Del Monacos I think. I searched the web for them and came up blank. Meg bought two plants this summer and both plants are 2 foot tall and wide completely covered in these pea sized "HOT" peppers. I added three of them to some salsa for heat a few times this summer. These are too hot for our liking.