Surpise!

It's not a big surprise, like we won the lottery, but enjoyable all the same. Yesterday, I saw my first bloom on a spider lily plant that a friend gave me last year. She brought them with her when she moved from California and decided that she had too many. They spent the winter in our garage because these lilies are not hearty in our cold weather. They've been outside for months now and I've been waiting and wondering when or if they were going to bloom. And yesterday, I turned around and there it was. The first interesting, delicate, beautiful bloom. When I went outside this morning to show Ward, there was another. All blooms are interesting, but it's fun to be surprised by a new-to-me one. And when I read up on them, they said they were deer resistant. A big plus.

And speaking of deer resistant plants, tomatoes do not qualify. For a while now, deer have been eating the top off of our tomato plants and have now included the tomatoes. You know, if they would just pick a couple of tomatoes and eat the whole thing, I wouldn't mind. It's the take one big bite out of several tomatoes that I don't like. Same goes for the zucchini and sunflowers. Oh, well. It's all part of the balance of nature, I guess.

Despite the fact that the deer enjoyed the tomatoes, we were able to harvest several. I spent yesterday afternoon working with them and plan to make sauce out of them today to freeze. Also, we've finally used up the last of the zucchini. We'll see if we get some more when the deer will hopefully decide they are tired of them. The cucumbers are slowly coming on, but we've been lucky that Uncle Billy has been sharing his abundant crop. We've also been blueberry picking in his patch a couple of times that have yielded some for the freezer and some for snacking. I love this time of year with fresh vegetables and fruits to be found in abundance.

Computer time is up, so until next time...