Our Mexican Mint Marigolds have started to bloom. We noticed them starting to bud over the weekend and by Monday, we had tons of small golden-yellow flowers. 
~Yellow is my favorite color and one that we didn't have in the yard until these fall beauties bloomed.
Our Fall vegetable garden seems to be doing pretty good so far and I'm getting really excited and hopeful that it will be better than our summer garden was. 
This pepper is a mystery to Jack and I. When we bought our pepper plants, we thought be were getting serrano and jalapeno peppers, but somehow we ended up with two of these mystery pepper plants and two jalapeno plants. Well, whatever kind they are, they're doing really well. There's half a dozen or so that seem ready to be picked.
We continue to have more Okra then we can eat. We've prepared them every way imaginable and though we enjoy Okra very much, there's only so many Okra fritters a person can eat! Next year, remind us not to plant eight okra plants! I think just two will do.
~ A late watermelon. Only our second of the season and probably our last.
~Our Basil is growing like crazy! I haven't trimmed them back in a few weeks and as a result they've started to bolt (flower). This is not a good thing if you want fresh, non-bitter tasting basil, but really good if you want to attract beneficial insects like this little bee who is enjoying our lemon basil plant. 
~some of the wildflowers Jack planted are still blooming
While I was snapping pictures of the garden and flowers, a group of Wren visited our backyard. They were so tiny and cute; playing and chattering about. In the picture above they're setting on our Bouncing Back tree and below they're exploring our corn plants. 
~ I found lots of ladybug pupa on our winter squash leaves.
It's pretty crazy to me that the ladybug larva and pupa are so ugly, yet the ladybug itself is so cute and colorful. I took a few pictures last summer of some ladybug larva and pupa on our cilantro plant. I never posted them, and can't get to the pictures right now (still no desk computer) but, if you haven't seen a ladybug larva and are interested in what it looks like or in the different stages of a ladybug, click here.
~I don't see how this could possibly be comfortable!
So anyway, I'm really pleased that our fall garden and flower beds are doing so well right now. The Mexican Mint Marigolds should continue to bloom throughout the Fall and hopefully we'll enjoy lots of garden fresh veggies from our garden during this time as well.
I'll try to post more about our fall garden than I did about our summer garden (which was never!) but hopefully, I can get Jack to do it since he's the expert. We'll see!
Happy Wednesday!
