king zucchini

this is the thing i've harvested from my garden. hopefully the tomatoes turn red soon so i can make some nice italian dish.

there will certainly be more zucchini. look at this plant:



actually, it's two plants. the second one on the right was about ready to die before i hit it with miracle-gro. and grow it did.

"Squash is ready to start picking 50-55 days after planting or about one week after the flower sets fruit. You will need to harvest every other day as squash matures very fast. Pick when tender. Elongated types such as yellow and zucchini pick when they are not more than 6-8 inches long. Do not leave overly mature squash on the vine as it will literally shut the plant down."

the dude abides

enjoy the sounds of his dudeness

soundboard 1

soundboard 2

happy birthday!

new jewelry

zucchini - success!

those flowers finally decided to do something useful. that is the biggest, but there are 2 others. the biggest is about 5 or 6 inches long already. i need to find out when i need to pick it.

also:

For heavy fruit set in tomatoes, night temperature is more important than day temperature. Tomatoes like wide swings in temperatures day to night with 77-86 F days and 60.8 to 68 night as optimal. Fruit set is poor when temperatures hit over 86C or below 59C. If night temperatures exceed 75 or daytime temperatures reach 100+, tomatoes will drop blossoms or not set fruit. High temperatures raise havoc with tomato flower fertilization by not only reducing pollen production but also reducing the viability of the ovule (plant ovary).

hopefully it cools down, then.

canyons and clouds

photos

i've been cleaning up my hard drive for the eventual reformat that's coming soon. it's the best way to keep a computer running smooth. start from scratch, and if your running a windows machine, scrape scratch down about 50%, and you're good.

one thing that needs to be back up is photos. i've been accumulating them much quicker now that i have a digital camera, and most are just sitting in one directory with nothing more than a serial number for a name. i've started putting them into directories by months or events when they were taken, and i've made progress. but i've found a few that i thought i should post. here goes:



the sun setting in alaska behind some trees scarred by fire.



a peacock from my local aviary.



festus doing what he loves best: sticking his head out a car window.

clowns

i guess they don't qualify as authorized service personal. go figure.

i pity the fool the doesn't use listerine breath strips

because i will crush your head if you don't!

coolest. truck. ever.

saw this one day at the high-class arctic circle in west salt lake.

a couple of older men own that fine truck. funluvn!



and in case you can't make out the dash ornament:

business news you can use

In a surprise move to some, but not to others, Chuck-a-rama today announced that it is entering into a business agreement with the LDS Church in which Chuck-a-rama will provide free meals during all church activities. As part of the arrangement, restaurants will be built as additions to LDS chapels.

The restaurant's CEO Charles Barflee commented: "The Mormons have been such faithful customers, so to speak, that we felt that we should help them out. They have so many kids, you know."

two turn tables and a lens cap in my pocket

turns out i spelled zucchini wrong. there's two 'C's.

here are some more pictures of the zucchini flowers, and i got my butt out of bed early enough to take some pictures.

click on a photo for a bigger view.



here's a bee doing its thing:



here's the other flower. maybe i should look up whether the plants have male and female flowers, because you'll notice the different structure on this one.



and this is how they looked just a moment ago, about an hour and a half later, after the heat started kicking in.



and



the hydrolic-pneumatic pressures kick in, folding up the flower.

laziness or just buzy

i'm not sure. never made it to 7-11 on july 11th. but they are doing some special this month according to the radio ads.

(lousy radio. i liked x96 until i had to listen to it for 5 hours non-stop)

urban legend? or fact?

is it true that 7-11 gives away free slurpies today(july 11th)? i've heard this a couple times, but have always forgotten to go there to see. i'll have to check after work.

mary, mary, quite contrary, how does my garden grow?

i should have taken this in the morning when i first saw it, but there's the flower on my zuchini plant. hopefully it opens again tonight. if not, i guess are zuchini is on the way.



here are my tomotoes. growing well!



here are their blooms:



and here are the tomatoe fruits that will be ready in a couple more weeks.

two months -

and counting. see how often i update.

in any case, for those of you who don't know otherwise, the river job in moab didn't work out, so i'm back in salt lake, and probably better off for it.

more to come...