These Are Not Pole Beans

I tried something different with beans this year. In the past, if I waited until the soil was warm enough to plant them directly in the ground, either they did not have enough time to ripen or they rotted from too much rain. This year, I waited until after the plant sale, then planted three trays of beans in the greenhouse. The seeds germinated and grew quickly and I was able to transplant the starts into the ground in early June. They are doing splendidly. I will keep to this method in the future.

I grow mostly bean varieties to dry, such as navy beans and black beans. We eat a lot of those. I also started what I thought were pole beans—a variety called Fowler’s Pole Beans—but either the package was mislabeled or I got them mixed up with something else. I arranged those plants around a bamboo teepee, but they never attempted to climb the trellis. This is how they look (need weeding!):

Yeah, those are not pole beans. It remains to be seen whether they are bush green beans or something else.

We’ve been snacking on a few raspberries; “a few” is all we’re going to get this year after I ruthlessly pruned out the patch. Next year, though, we will be swimming in them. Look at how many primocanes there are:

All of those green canes should have berries on them next year, although I may still do some thinning. The thornless variety has mostly pushed out the thorny variety and I am happy about that. The thornless variety has much bigger, tastier berries.

The Sugar Baby watermelon plant is producing:

Everything that the ground squirrels haven’t ravaged looks great. The lavender hedges have bloomed, although the number of bees is way down from previous years.

The employees and the husband were working here yesterday. I had one of the boys help me put a top dressing of compost on the small apple trees followed by a good watering. I am trying to water them at least every couple of days so they establish good root systems. That Lodi apple tree I bought at Costco at the beginning of April has been a puzzle. The husband planted it not long after I bought it, but I truly thought it had died because it didn’t leaf out until about two weeks ago. It still looks a bit anemic. I am hoping it will perk up.

Still no chicks—I can’t tell if those broody hens just want to be perpetually broody or if they are sitting on viable eggs.

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I’ve got a load of paperwork to do this morning. I need to make up the class handouts for my Christmas in July class on Friday. Thankfully, I took extensive notes while I was making samples.

I cannot express adequately how annoyed I am with Quickbooks Online. What irritates me most is that tasks that used to take one or two keystrokes now require five or six (or more). Bookkeeping for the construction company has slowed to a crawl because of it. This is what happens when software engineers and not busy bookkeepers design a program. Every time I am asked for feedback, Intuit gets an earful from me.

I stopped at Joanns yesterday for more clearance fabric. I want to test out my Lark Tee/Olympia mashup pattern and I’d rather do it with fabric that is only a few dollars a yard. I bought some double-brushed poly for $4.97 a yard with an additional 25% off. The store is a mess right now because all of the fall stock is coming in and they are rearranging the shelves and moving fabric around. I think it will be better organized when they are done, but finding anything at the moment requires a bit of scavenging.