The garden in early July

Things are really starting to grow.  Snap peas finally blossomed and it looks like we’re going to get some peas before the heat completely overwhelms the vines, and the cucumbers are growing like mad.  At first I was worried about pollination, but lots are growing now and we’ve enjoyed several at the last two Tuesday pizza nights.  More this coming week and should be our first real crop of snap peas, too; there have a been a couple here and there, but a bunch look to be ready to harvest in the coming week.  We planted some tricolor beans we got from our Jamba Juice grant, and they’re already up.  Can’t wait to see what they look like . . .

But the real story — to me at least — of our garden in the last week has been the butterflies.  We’ve seen a ridiculous number of Red Admirals (photos below); they come by 10s and 20s in the late afternoon to our garden and adjacent butterfly bushes.  Warner and I saw the amazing Tiger Swallowtail over the weekend, but were without a camera to prove it; I saw a Question Mark the same evening (the hindwings of the one I saw weren’t quite as dark as in the linked picture).  And yesterday we saw what we’re pretty sure were Monarchs.

It’s quite something out there . . .