water of life

I planned on spending the day in the garden but instead it decided to pour down with rain.  I've been trying to duck out in between showers but I've been driven back inside for a while.  Not that I'm complaining!

The rain sure does bring things back to life.  There are more birds, bees, and lots of new plant growth.  Unfortunately it also means the weeds are back with a vengeance after sitting patiently inside seeds for the last few months.  As you can see here, my lawn is starting to look alive again ... but so are thousands of tiny weeds.  I'm not looking forward to dealing with all of them.

They're not the only thing sprouting though.  It only took four days before the first of the alyssum seeds began to sprout, and here's were they stand one week after planting.

I wanted to share one more garden miracle.  Recall that my pumpkin vine only ended up with 5 fruit across two vines.  I lost a lot of fruit before I started hand-pollinating, and even then I lost more because I wasn't watering enough. 

Well in the two weeks we were in Texas, three more pumpkins somehow pollinated.  I kept expecting them to shrivel and fall off, but on the contrary they now look like this!

I'm actually a little torn.  I'm glad I may have three more pumpkins than I originally planned, but I also want to plant some of the sweet yellow granex onions I brought back from the USA, and they're meant to go in that bed.  I can stall for a little while by starting them in punnets, but only for so long before they have to go in the ground.  Based on when the first round of pumpkins were about this size, it'll be two more months before these are ripe!

Here's a portrait of the little culprit who's responsible for these three new pumpkins - a bee taking shelter from the rain.  See what happens when you pollinate irresponsibly, little bee?  You make unexpected babies right when I thought this vine would be retiring!