Fibermania

Rosies and Rhodies

Rose Breasted Grosbeaks at our feeder. We have seen the female too, who wears a dull brown striped outfit, poor darling. The males have such a fine ensemble with a really pink breaststripe down their middle. We also were visited with three glowing blue grosbeaks, eating the chicken feed in the pen, but I was sans camera, so I'll have to wait to post pictures until I am luckier.

At dusk I went out to the shade garden to shoot the newly opened rhododendrons. Pink is the color of them all I think, altho only this one of the four has revealed itself.
The buds are so deep pink.

The cabbages are getting HUGE already, and are both blue-green and purple. Will this ever become a red cabbage as advertised? I have never grown cabbages before, but am so glad I decided to have these in my kitchen garden. I also have some smaller stonehead specimens, which look like regular storebought cabbages so far.

Except for more basil seedlings to come, the kitchen gardens are completed. I have used the plastic bottles as mini-greenhouses for my poblano pepper sprouts. They took FOREVER to sprout and I don't want anything to mess with their eventual maturing. Behind them are nine California Wonder plants, from a pack that I have had as long as the cabbages. I just put them in because the soil temps rose to an appropriate 50 degrees. I have flowers, both annuals and perennials mixed in with the veggies and some cilantro seeds have been scattered near the walkway, making them easier to pick when needed.
I still have pots of tomatoes to plant, but we are in the middle of constructing a bed for them and are waiting to get more landscape timbers to finish off the plot. The varieties that are going in are German Pink, Brandywine, Park's Whopper and Sweet 100's. Way too many tomatoes for one girl, since Dave doesn't eat them. Add to that, 9 cucumber plants and 9 zucchini, and I should seriously begin designing my fruit stand for the coming harvest. What have I done?