Same yard, different photos

Brown-eyed Susan

I have been wanting to venture forth and get some amazing shots of Connecticut sights, but I got sick over the weekend and am still feeling a little wobbly today.  Soooo, I grabbed my camera, tripod and headed out the door.  Since it was only 6:30 am when I started the light was very low.  I found a lot of my pictures to be grainy -- high ISO to compensate for low light creates noise, or what we see as a grainy shot.

I almost deleted all of the photos but then decided to work with what I had.  A couple of hours post processing and I have a few shots that make me happy.

Brown-eyed Susan close-up

In the low light, the bright yellow really pops.  I love it!

The photo to the left looks totally different on my monitor with an hdmi cable vs. non-hdmi.  Hmmmm, think I need to break down and get a second cable.  Huge difference in color saturation.

New sugar pumpkin growing on the cattle panel fence

I have had a problem with female flowers and their potential fruit turning yellow and falling off.  Out of my four vines I have only three pumpkins that have survived.  Don't get me wrong.  I am certainly not complaining.  Sugar pumpkins were $.70 a pound last year and I ended up not getting any.  And that is non-organic pricing.  My pumpkins are heirlooms grown organically (property has been organic since 2003 -- three years after we purchased it).  Even my dairy goats were raised organic, organic feed, limited vaccinations, limited worming (used herbal wormer), and this garden area is located in the old goat yard.

Back to pumpkins not "taking".  I think it is related to the amount of rain they have been getting: a lot!  Each time a pumpkin has "taken" it has been during a dry spell.  So now I don't even water these babies.  They don't seem to like much water at all.

I will probably need to figure out a harness setup to ensure the pumpkins growing on the fence do not break off or damage the vine.

I wanted you to be able to see the spines on the Suyo Long cucumber.  They are quite prickly.

A young Suyo Long cucumber

Then as they near harvest time they fill out and become smoother.

I will be harvesting the largest cucumber today.  I can't wait to make a salad with my own cucumber, cherry tomatoes, fresh garlic, and feta cheese, all marinating in a balsalmic vinaigrette.

Amish Deer Tongue lettuce

And finally, here a another picture of the Amish Deer Tongue lettuce going to seed.  I look forward to photographing the flowers and seeds, and especially look forward to saving my own seeds, though they will have been cross-pollinated with a variety of other lettuces.

There is a lot more going on:
- Allowing my snow peas to grow full-size for seed harvesting
- Same with my purple pole beans (which I disliked tremendously but will give away -- I just don't like pole beans)
- More Moskovich tomatoes are growing in my driveway container garden
- Deck garden is thriving including tiny buds on my bell pepper plant already and several tomatoes about 1/2 inch in size plus lots and lots of tomato flowers