Baby Sister's Garden

This is my Baby Sister, Babs.

She is exceedingly creative, as you can see from the shawl she is wearing,

and she is a gardener extraordinaire!

Babs grows Cardoon (a relative of artichokes) in the narrow strip of her driveway,

and we were fascinated by the activity going on.

Aphids have set up colonies all over the plants,

and ladybugs are generating many eggs which, when hatched, will feast on the aphids.

This is something all gardeners love to see...nature working its best without us to interfere.

Below you can see in the middle of the picture some pale orange ladybug eggs on the underside of the leaf.

The ladybug larvae is lavender-to-purple with orange spots and kind of a 'lizard' look, and about 1/4 inch long.


I once had the opportunity to watch a Tricogamma wasp lay eggs into the body of a Tomato Horn worm which the lady whose garden this was occurring gave us for our own garden so that we would have the benefits of this fabulous wasp to the horn worms inhabiting our own garden.
The process was fascinating to watch!

Above and below you can see the wonderful display of flowers reminding me of Chicory, a daisy-like pale blue.

When traced to the ground we found they were a lettuce blooming all in the tomatoes and peas of my Sisty's garden.

This garden is located in Bellingham, Washington where the marine air cools things a bit for gardening. My sister is able to grow a great crop of blueberries, raspberries, lettuce, chard, peas, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, and beans.

Babs is an extraordinary woman!

Thanks for the good time with you and Mom last week.

Now, I must go out and string up some support for my own beans...pole beans, which I've never grown before. It has come to me that I'm too old for bush beans now; the bending and stooping are too much, so this is my new endeavor.

The tomatoes are still 'just surviving", but the squashes are really thriving.

More on my own garden later.