tiny precious onion blossoms

It’s been a while since I posted gardening pictures, hasn’t it? Anyway, my onion is juuuuuuuust about to burst into bloom. I expect actual flowers on Wednesday or Thursday. (I believe this form of blossom is technically known as an umbel, just FYI.)

The first two pictures are from June 18th.







The second two pictures are from June 24th.

this is why cats are evil, just FYI

When my mom visited on June 8th, she brought me a random pepper plant -- I guess because I was already growing my own peppers and her gardening leans more toward flowering plants than toward edible vegetables. I photographed it on June 11th. As you can see, it was oddly low-set, but very full-leafed and obviously flourishing.




I put it outside on June 18th, to keep my onion company.






Two days later, something beheaded it. I am pretty sure, in this case, the culprit was one of my neighbors' cats rather than a passing squirrel. The dirt had not been disturbed at all, you see, and squirrels just aren't that casually cruel in their destructiveness.




However, a few leaves at the base of the main stem survived, and as the plant has not yet died from shock, I have hopes of its eventual recovery. I moved the plastic info stake closer to the remnant leaves on the off chance that it might serve as a vague deterrent to further attacks. We shall see what happens.

eleven peppers pepping

And here are all my other peppers -- the ones I have been growing from seeds.




As you can see, I recently repotted nine of them into their final adult pots, and gave them their permanent adult stakes while I was at it. The two round gray plastic pots are leftovers from last year. The two green square-ish plastic pots I bought at Target this spring. And the terracotta pots I got practically for free when we were cleaning out the basement of the smoke shop, in preparation for closing the store.




As for the two peppers that are still in their original tiny pots, the oddly dark-leafed one that has basically been refusing to grow properly is, unsurprisingly, still refusing to grow. I have no idea what its problem is, but as long as it's not dead, I will keep giving it water and sunlight and occasional fertilizer, and we'll see what happens.




The pepper that simply got a very late start, on the other hand, is following the same general path that its nine elder siblings took. It's just running a few weeks behind, and is also somewhat smaller/shorter than they were at a comparable phase of leaf development.




I'm not putting the repotted peppers outside just yet. I want them to be a bit more securely rooted before I put them within reach of the local cats. *casts evil eye across the lawn*

a walk in Fall Creek gorge, part 1

One thing I love about living in Ithaca is that there are waterfalls right in the middle of town. No, seriously. For example, I live five minutes away from Ithaca Falls, which is the final waterfall on Fall Creek before it runs into Lake Cayuga. It's a municipal park, albeit a tiny one. You can see the waterfall from the street, and it takes all of two minutes to walk there. You can walk literally right up to the falls themselves if you're feeling particularly brave and stupid -- there's no railing to protect you and keep you back.

There IS a small sign advising basic common sense and forbidding swimming, but people tend to ignore that. The base of the waterfall is a popular swimming spot in the height of the summer. And every year, at least one person either drowns or comes damn close to drowning, because the sign is not there for the city's amusement. There are some nasty, swirling currents in that creek, and a LOT of rocks to trap you underwater, and a bunch of hidden kettleholes too.

(It's mostly idiot college students who die, but townies are not immune to overconfidence.)

These photos were taken on June 22nd and show a fairly typical water level -- maybe a little closer to spring averages than to summer averages, judging by the ledge that's currently underwater but which I have often seen bone dry and covered in sunbathers. The gorge walls don't look very high, but that's because Ithaca Falls drops the creek down nearly to lake level, and the land doesn't take all that much longer to make its own drop down to the flat valley floor.


Here is Ithaca Falls, as seen from the side of the creek.


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a walk in Fall Creek gorge, part 2

Being a tree down in a gorge is an exercise in tradeoffs. On the one hand, you have a constant source of water, which can be very nice in the heart of summer. On the other hand, well, spring floods can get very high. And since the gorge itself is mostly made of bare shale... you get pummeled by a lot of sharp-edged rocks carried along by those floods.

This produces some really neat root structures, not to mention some very oddly bent and twisted trees. And yes, the trees in the later pictures are growing right out of the water. Some of that is a side effect of shifting water levels, but the other thing about floods is they shift the stream bed. Dry land is not stable, as the last tree in this photoset has learned to its regret. It's not quite dead yet, but unless it gets a nice shield of rocks and mud built up over this summer and fall, it may drown before it sees another summer.



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