This is the sitting area on our deck. My favorite chair is the one on the right, still in shadow and hard to see. It stays cool there until about noon.

This is the view from my chair, looking to the west. This is a great place to enjoy the cool mornings before the sun heats things up.

The herb garden with bird bath in the center is to the left (south) of the veggie beds. It has only sage and sorrel in it at present. I feed the sorrel to the chickens.

The chicken coop is to the left (south) of the herb garden. Fruit trees grow beyond.

We are down to three hens, but two of them are laying, so we are good in the egg department. The girls are enjoying a new layer of pine shavings in their outdoor run. They love to dig in the dirt, looking for the scratch that I scatter for them as a treat.

I like watching my veggies grow. This bed is the most recently planted one. I have nets over all three beds to keep the birds out. They had been eating my lettuce, peas, green beans, and even the cucumber leaves.

This is bed #2, the first one I planted this summer. It is looking lush, but is not producing anything ready to harvest yet. Later.

Bed #1 was planted after bed #2, and is coming along nicely. It had room for a row of beans, so I planted some pole beans.

This is a bean called Ojo de Capra, Eye of Goat. I got the seeds from Native Seed Search. I haven’t grown them before. I planted them late in the season, so who knows if I will get a crop or not. It’s an experiment, like much of my gardening.

I planted a row of Frijol Chivita (Little Goat Beans) in bed #3. Again, it’s late in the season, and the seeds were old, so who knows if they will even sprout.

I have four Butternut squash that have set fruit. Three were hand-pollinated. There were male flowers open on the same day as the female flower for the fourth squash, so I let nature take its course. It appears to be pollinated, but I’m not positive yet. I don’t see any more female flowers, so this may be my entire harvest, four Butternut squash.

The three zucchini plants have a lot of male flower buds, and I can see one female bud. I have my fingers crossed for getting some summer squash before summer is over.

This is just some of the damage that the birds did before I got netting over bed #3. I transplanted 8 cucumber vines, but the birds seem to have eaten the growth end off of about five of them. VBS.

I had some spider plants that weren’t doing well in pots in this west-facing sunny spot, so I replaced them with pots of Penta, marigolds, and Lantana. That’s right, a mini-garden for butterflies and bees.

I think this is a Funeral Duskywing, but it might be a dark Fiery Skipper.

A Gulf Fritillary on a marigold in my new hanging basket pollinator garden.

One of the many Monarchs in our yard.

And here is a Monarch with its wings a bit more spread.

I like to do “yard patrol,” looking at what has sprouted. This time it is radishes and carrots.

I don’t know if this will show up or not, but it is supposed to be a picture of a female Western Fence lizard on the rock to the right. We also have males in the yard, and I assume that they are reproducing. At this point, they outnumber the Southern Alligator Lizards in our yard, which is a National Wildlife Federation certified backyard habitat.

The hummingbirds are very happy that I have finally cleaned and refilled the feeders for them. The male Allen’s hummingbirds fight over the feeders. “Mine!” “No, mine, get away!” Silly birds. There are three feeders, enough for everyone. Apparently they aren’t into sharing.