Just a Baby!!

Norris is in class today, finishing up some specialized emergency management training. He may have nothing of interest in terms of photos to share from this class - though different from usual, many of his classmates are police, he told me on the phone this morning. But since he is in class, the blog is the best way for me to show what he missed today - even though the photo is not great. I think it's still clear we had another black and furry visitor using the stairs that go from our back road to the logging road this afternoon. I was in the kitchen, waiting for a couple of hummingbird feeders to empty before heading out when I heard quite a commotion from our seed feeders in the back yard.....


I had no assistant to grab the camera, and to attach the telephoto lens - the back door was shut but I got this photo through the kitchen window and screen - I was afraid any opening of doors or commotion at the window would frighten the small bear away. This one was maybe half the size of the visitor we had a couple of weeks ago - and much more timid. It was fairly close to the house when I first saw it, but had backed away and sat down for a moment before heading back up the mountain. Probably Momma Bear was lingering nearby, but black bears are hard to spot in the shadows!

The commotion, by the way, was just the pesky squirrels who hang around at the seed feeder all day long.

Vegetable update

Since we showed photos of our new raised vegetable garden bed going in, it's time we showed a few of the crops we are slowly starting to harvest. We had a splash of rain this morning, so here at 11:00 the plants look pretty with the water.

We got a little bit of a late start, so we bought mostly plants. Nothing we started from seed has produced anything edible.

Summer squash - we've had one just this week, looks like we'll have a couple more this week, all from one of the four plants we put in.


We've had green beans twice - all four of the plants are producing. Here are some young beans we'll get to eat this week.


We planted only one eggplant. This little cutie is not ready to harvest. There's another smaller one on the plant. Norris is not crazy about eggplant, but it's one of the vegetables he will eat.
We've had maybe three cucumbers, and have a lot more coming. Again, everything is coming from one of the four plants we put in. These have been sweet and the seeds are not too hard.


We have been enjoying our little cherry tomatoes while we wait for the green heirlooms to ripen. There's a fennel plant that might be doing well - hard to tell until we decide to pull it up. From seed, we tried radishes, which came up but didn't grow, carrots doing probably about the same, and dill that didn't even come up.