Less than two weeks until school starts? Say it ain’t so. Here’s what’s happening in my gardens.

We’ve had more bees and butterflies in our yard this year than ever before. It could be because we have more coneflowers than ever before; they really spread. Here’s a tiger swallowtail in the foreground and a red admiral in the background, enjoying the coneflowers next to a carpentry project Adam was working on last week.

I managed to save one of the Prairie Blazing Star plants in my boulevard from rabbits this spring. It’s finally blooming, and looks glorious at 5+ feet tall. Now that the coneflowers are just past their peak, it’s providing some nourishment for this bee. Level two of wildflower gardening is when you figure out a way to provide for pollinators during the entire growing season, and the very early and very late seasons can be tricky. But this Prairie Blazing Star, some sunflowers, and goldenrod are going to be nice late summer/early fall food sources.

My main vegetable garden is being taken over by pie pumpkins and hops (you can see the hops actually coming in through my bedroom window upstairs). The tomatoes (trellised at right) have been a bit underwhelming this year, but I’m hearing that from other people, too, so I’m guessing it was partly having to do with our (so far) mostly cool summer.

A picking of “crazy” vegetables, the theme of our home garden this year. Yard long beans, white cucumbers, a variety of peppers, purple green beans, and some not-quite-ripe-yet Sungold tomatoes. We ripen them on the counter top to prevent squirrel thievery.

Here’s a panorama of my community garden plot at Sabathani, which is being overtaken by Long Island Cheese pumpkins. Behind the pumpkins, our dying-off potatoes (we’ve eaten three of the seven hills now), then the brussels sprouts mingling nicely with anise hyssop, and finally Anneke’s strawberry popcorn in the back. Random composting instructions in Español on the side.

At last, my first ever successful brussels sprouts experience. I can hardly wait to eat these!