Home Again: Good News and Bad News

We'll start with the bad news... While at the lake, we got a text from someone checking our animals that seven of our ducks had escaped the pasture and were chilling on our front lawn. She was able to herd them back in, but the others weren't around. We figured they were in the back pasture or something and told her not to worry about it. 

The next day, our other chore person found two duck bodies in the pasture. Ohhhh. That's why those seven were out... escaping a predator. They were the smart ones; none of the other eight have been found so we suspect they got eaten. 

Not much you can do while on vacation. 

The following day, there are were only six ducks and another clump of feathers in the lawn. Our chore person moved the ducks back into the trampoline and there have been no more deaths since. 

Time to get a dog. I put out a call on Facebook and got a few suggestions. We applied for approval to adopt at the two shelters/rescues in Mankato and are checking out a dog today (an Australian shepherd terrier cross). Hopefully he gets along with our animals! The dog foster parent is bringing the dog out to our house this afternoon so we can see.

Now for the good news! Our fruit trees were ready to harvest when we got home! This is our peach tree:

The netting bags worked better than I expected. Some of the fruit had fallen off the tree but stayed off the ground in the bags so it was still good to eat. 

The apricot tree was ready too. Here's our complete harvest of both (minus one peach we ate immediately after picking). So sweet! Better than candy!

Even though deer decimated our cherry tree's load of apples early in the summer, we ended up with two to enjoy. 

Our garden hasn't taken off at all (well, except for the weeds). Too cold? Too much water? Our tomatoes and peppers look almost the same as the day we planted them. The cruciferous veggies are finally growing. Our potatoes that looked so good in June don't look so good now... Yellow leaves and stunted growth. G hoed a few rows and accidentally unearthed a few little potatoes. Hey, they're producing at least!

I used the weed whipper to cut down the sea of grass between the rows. I found a couple beans!

Our garlic has produced scapes. I wondered how big the bulbs were, so I dug one up. Answer: not very. Hopefully they'll grow some more, but I'm not very hopeful. 

I'm disappointed in our garden, but G keeps reminding me that this is our learning and experimenting year. Hopefully next year will be better!