Artichoke

An artichoke flower

Artichokes ..ready to be eaten

A couple of artichokes from the garden. The flower looks interesting too...

How to eat artichokes : follow this link.

Tomatoes

The first big tomatoes (Early Girl variety) are ripe today. For the last couple of weeks we have been getting the salad tomatoes (Sweet 100 variety). It is only this week that we can get a handful of them off from a couple of cherry tomato plants. They are delicious:

Gloriosa Daisy

Finally, one of them emerged out of the crowd of zinnia and marigold flowers.
What a beautiful flower... I am going to grow more of these for sure in the years to come.

A Humming bird was taking nectar from the Gladiolis flower while I was working in the garden today. Have started training the nasturtium to climb up on a string in the patio. A few tomatoes and cucumbers are ripe now. Also, the bell peppers are ready to eat. Enjoyed a couple of squash during the last camping trip to Lake Tahoe area. They go well with stir fried vegetables along with bell peppers.

Coopers Hawk

It is almost a year since the two baby Coopers Hawks visited our garden with their parents. They used to sit on the fence and use a ladder to hop up and down to the grassy area where the parents would teach them how to catch garden lizards. Since then, we have seen a good decline in the garden lizards around our yard. This is a picture from last year..

I will post a video later of the Hawks playing in the garden.

I think there is a little rat in the claws of the Hawk. I am not sure..

Blue Jay

There are more birds who love to eat the lawn seeds. I don't feel too bad about letting the lawn dry this year. Anyway, California is going through another drought season.

This blue bird, I think it is a blue jay (or a scrub jay?) , spent a couple of hours this morning feeding on the lawn seeds from the last cutting.