Canning Beans, Camp Alta Mons, and Dave

This past Thursday my parents came to help me pick the tenderettes (green beans). My mom was horrified when she arrived because I was pulling up the whole plant to pick the beans, and I was wasting a future crop. I pulled the plants on purpose because the leaves were so eaten up by the same little yellow beetle larva that was on the squash. They also made fun of me for being determined to kill as many as possible. I did leave the plants that were not eaten on so bad and may get a few more to pick. Mom took a mess of beans home with her and I took the remaining beans to my mother in laws to can. We ended up with 14 quarts, I think we could have gotten 21 if we had the ones that mom took but I was ready to be done and we had enough left after the 14 to give more away and cook some for the church service at Camp Alta Mons.

The service at Camp Alta Mons is a yearly tradition. Several of my favorite childhood memories took place at this camp when I was little. Many things have changed since then but I still love to go. The creek that I use to find and collect crayfish from has almost dried up, it was redirected to fill a giant pond that never filled?? A few of us hiked to the falls. (Nobody went rock hopping up the creek like we (myself and all my cousins) did way back when!) The falls have turned into a trickle and there is no swimming hole at the bottom, it seems to have filled up with silt along with some shifting in the rocks below.

The basket in the back is twice as big as the one in the front, so we had a lot of beans.


We have been in strawberry heaven this year!
I have been obsessed with learning about all the pests in the garden this year. Here are the squash bug eggs and nymph stages. They were hatching out like crazy for a couple of days but I think the outbreak is over for now, I hope.

I think these eggs look so amazing when you zoom in on them, they are from the squash beetle.

Here is a view of the falls at Camp Altamons.
My first photo of human beings. My sister, dad, and me!


My sister's son spotted this snail on the trail.Finally, here is a picture of our cat Dave. We got him as a wild, ferrell cat. We took him to the vet to be vaccinated and neutered. They clipped his ear in case he ran away when we got him home. Since we was use to running wild we had no idea what he might do. At first we didn't see him for several days, but we kept putting food out that was getting eaten. Then my husband used a sensor camera to snap a photo proving he was the critter eating the food in our barn. At that point he started showing up every night around 7:00 and we slowly got him to let us feed him there a little and even touch him. Before we knew it he was at our house all hours of the day and spends most of his time on our porch. He craves attention, is constantly under our feet, and follows us around in the yard like a puppy. So we have a real pet!