my gardens in August

Here it is August already, and my gardens are doing great! (Compare this to my July gardens.)

A local gardener who is considered to have one of the greenest thumbs around, explained to me that the trick to a healthy garden in Montana is water. If you can keep your soil moist, your plants will do well.

During July we had several thunderstorms of varying intensity, and some were accompanied by heavy rainfall. This helped a lot!

Here are some close-ups:

pumpkins sprawl across the lawn

an heirloom runner bean blossom ("Sunset Peach")

the beans dance across bean poles

it's a baby pumpkin!

in another part of the garden: herbs (rosemary, basil, sage, dill, chives)

Meanwhile, in town . . .

Apart from my heirloom sunflowers happily attracting bees, my garden in town is not doing anything visually exciting. In the lower foreground of this overview photo, you can see an acorn squash plant taking over not only my plot but the one next to it. Hopefully, that means a lot of squash to store for winter. The taller plants behind the squash are sunflowers -- there will be many blossoms soon. You can also see (just barely, to the right) dill and jalapeno pepper plants. In the distance, the ubiquitous zucchini plants are doing great!

The zucchinis are going crazy! Every day I stop by, another 2- to 4-pounder has seemingly sprung from nowhere! I am trying to pick a few small ones for a nice stir-fry, but I can't seem to catch them in time. Still, I am grateful for any abundance.