The first video is a Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly feasting on Echinacea.

Late summer is the time to assess how one’s garden has grown. Plants like peas are in final food bearing and starting to wilt for seed production. Broccoli has been picked to avoid bolting. Early greens, like kale, chard, and collards are still producing, while yukima, hon tsai tai, bok choy, and such have set and dried seed (which have now been harvested).

If one is an experimenter, like moi, or someone who rotates crops each season, observation and assessment is imperative for next season’s garden. Observations include:

• wow, squash plants are huge! Plant fewer together next year.
• birds love greens, too! Is the gardener alright with sharing and with holes in one’s chard or kale? Should any protection be used next season, like dangling shiny objects or netting of some sort?
• jeez, this climate change thing is wreaking havoc on my garden! What can be done? Along that line, sun/shade, amount of water needed in different areas: assess that at peak season. Spring and Fall do not well represent these factors.
• and, this food crop is a winner, and this one is a non-returner.

Not only did my garden contain the usual experiments with types of beans, new corn variety, and direct seed versus homegrown starts but it had an entire new area planted out. Closer to the house, electric wheelchair accessible, and not overwhelming to water, the new beds have several other factors to assess. The lay of the land means that one side gets morning sun only and the other side gets midday sun. What did well in these conditions; and what to plant differently next season?

You might have the considerations of shade from a neighbor’s tree(s), or your own trees growing taller and wider each year. With this conditioning factor, what food crops would

• grow quickly in early Spring before the tree fully leafs-out?
• tolerate or thrive in shade or dappled sun (lettuces, possibly non-climbing cucumber, for example)?
• what flowers or ground cover could be used in such locations with pollinators in mind?

Your garden or balcony might have a sun issue rather than shade. What food producers and flowers can take full sun? Then, there is heat which is a distinct issue. Shade cloth can mitigate direct sunlight but nothing can reduce ambient hot temperatures except clouds, night time, or a shade tree.

This season “habitat” showed its power; which is to say that this human being will put up next to nothing except tomatoes this season. It’s the first year for that since growing food in Jaroso.

• Birds have decimated the string bean plants; first the young leaves, then the climbing stems. Bean trellises are bare.
• Two new Southwest/Native bush beans were tried. They would be for dried beans. Being native to the southwest, they are drought tolerant, i.e. too much water is NG. My mistake was planting them among other crops that require medium watering. Neither are that happy.
• Consistent cold nights and hot days with intense altitude sun has confused the tomatoes, the ground cherries, and tomatillos. A couple of tomato plants have not produced one flower. Most have a fair amount of fruit, but the fruit is not encouraged to ripen by the cold nights. The ground cherries have been vigorous plants profuse with flowers but not one (!) fruit. The tomatillos never bushed out. A few paper husks hang on confused plants as if wondering about their purpose of being.

I asked Amalio if he had any extra string beans. “For you? Plenty!” he said, and returned with almost two pounds of fresh picked string beans. So kind. Sautéed beans for supper!

Birds are eating the pollen sacks on the corn tassels. The corn is half the size it “should” be. Various neighbors are having all the same issues in different combinations. Instead of birds, in one yard it’s mice who ate the entire pea stand once it was established.

Flowers are doing well. Yay. But, not one monarch butterfly yet this season. Milkweed is established along the county roads and the two-lane “highway.” My yard has a nice stand of it, and milkweed dots the county road leading to Jaroso; so, monarchs find what they need. But, the pesticide driven die-off of monarchs in California was a blow to this poster child of beauty and Nature. I’m still hoping for them and for their survival.

So, assessment. It’s a good time to do that.

I figure, as a human being, I owe plenty of karma to the animal kingdom, insects and birds chief among them. So, let them eat all they want. Make lots of babies, please! With MS progressing, the big back garden will be given largely to Nature; pathways kept accessible, the area watered weekly, but -with great joy- it’s yours. Enjoy!

I’m playing with tulle as a protection fabric vis a vis critters and, if doubled, it seems to provide good sun reduction. It’s cheap!

Let’s close with another hummingbird moth short video. They are so precious!