Stop shriveling cucumbers

or, “A brief photo tutorial on hand-pollinating cucumbers.”
A bit of introduction:
Last year, I was having problems with getting cucumbers to grow. I’d see the flowers, I’d see the baby cucumbers (which I later learned were female flowers, more about that below), and then the baby cucumbers would shrivel. I posted about it in [...]

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Baby cucumber spotting!

There are 2 baby cucumbers starting on one of my cucumber vines! Yay! I tried to pollinate the one that had bloomed, but it had just rained and everything was pretty wet. We’ll see….
I’ll be posting a detailed post on hand-pollinating soon…

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Polka-dot dress update

I’ve been pretty unmotivated to finish this polka-dot dress… But I made a rule with myself that I couldn’t work on scrapbooking until I finished the dress, and that has helped Last night while Husband and I were hosting a game with a few of our friends, I kept my hands [...]

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Thankful Thursday

It’s been a while since I’ve written a Thankful Thursday post…  
This week, I’m thankful that I got to spend some time with J and her beautiful new baby E!  I’m so glad that you both are doing well!
I’m also thankful for the wonderful time Husband and I had visiting his family in Iowa.  We [...]

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My, how you’ve grown

Husband and I just returned last night from a long weekend trip to the great state of Iowa. I was reminded again of the beauty of the vast stretches of farmland with rows of corn or soybeans starting. There is such a sense of peace in those fields– I could really enjoy sitting [...]

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Resubmitted!

At long last, I have resubmitted my paper for peer-review in the Astrophysical Journal.  It was a long haul, but God is good, and the paper’s sent in.
Praise the LORD!

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Strawberry harvest

We ate our first four strawberries yesterday!

They were very tasty– though so tiny!  There are more ripening on the plants– and we saw a couple birds alight on the “window” basket of strawberry plants.  I’m going to have to put my netting out there– and soon!

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New fertilizer

Until now I’ve been using Miracle Gro (the multi-purpose formulation) to fertilize my garden. It works fine, but I ran out So I went to the store today, and started looking at the fertilizer options that they had.
I’ve learned that fertilizers mainly contain three nutrients necessary for plants’ growth: nitrogen, [...]

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Pretty garden

Well, I think it’s pretty, anyway  Here are some photos I took yesterday in the beautiful, but fading, evening light.  
 

the peas reach for the sky

I managed to capture a pea pod unfurling

the tomato plants continue to thrive as the lettuce “season” ends

the cucumbers are growing quickly!

the italian parsley is thriving!  (unfortunately the [...]

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More on strawberry pollination

Husband was inspecting the strawberry plants yesterday morning and noticed that we have some blushing berries!!  Here’s a photo that I took when I got home from work yesterday:

I’m hoping they get bigger as they ripen, since these are looking pretty tiny still!  I’ve actually never witnessed strawberry growth on a plant, having always bought [...]

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