how does your garden grow?

I keep meaning to take pictures of the garden now that it's almost entirely covered with watermelon vines!  haha!  I'm sure no one but me will get a kick out of it, but it's pretty crazy.  not surprising - i planted way too many and I knew it.  oh well.  mistakes were made - i hope to eat many watermelons though!  and that'll be great!  Right now though, I'm rich in cucumbers and green beans!  I planted an heirloom purple pole bean and they've produced like gangbusters!

Arent' they pretty?  I swear I could pick a pound of them, close my eyes and turn around, and there'd be another batch on the vines already!  it's crazy!  We've eaten a lot and today I blanched and froze a few bags for the winter.  

The other amazing thing is this CORN!  I grew corn!  it's called Ruby Queen and it's red (of course).  I think I already mentioned that with all the rain and wind, the stalks got blown flat to the ground, and had to be reset, with fingers crossed.  Well it worked!  and finally we picked two ears and ate them - fantastic!  I'll tell you, it's not easy to know when corn is ready!  if we had a whole field of it, we'd just pick an ear periodically and check, but we didn't want to waste any.  We picked one ear too early and that made us gun shy to pick more and risk another wasted ear.  Finally though, it's ready!  We might be eating corn every day for a week now!  I can think of worse things!

heartbreak

This weekend our sweet little Olive got killed by a coyote.  

Since moving here she's been able to go outside and it's her favorite place to be.  Even though I can't stop crying, I don't think I'd do anything different if I had it to do over.  She was an entirely different cat outside - rolling around, wanting belly scratches, affectionate - inside she just stalked around growling at the other cats and not wanting to be touched.

She was Borris's mother - though I'm not sure he realized that.  They were just great pals - playing together like kids and following us around together.  I feel awful for him too.  The whole thing is just awful.