The Suspense is Killing Me

I love it when the butterflies drink from the butterfly bush. It's very charming.

We have lots of cute little beets humming along.

 
This was a shock:

I had no idea that two zucchinis are done. But there they are. They've grown four inches in two days.

The tomatoes are so close, and there are so many of them on some plants. I want to have friends over for Caprese every day.

The cayennes look fabulous; they're just getting some finishing size and color, I imagine.

And I have this cute wildflower in my yard...I love the cute little random bird-gifts and preschooler-gifts.

Spreading the Good News

We have early girl tomatoes! Beautiful early girl tomatoes.

We have deer visitors who didn't destroy much yesterday or today.

We have lettuce!

That's lettuce, right? I'm shell-shocked from the recent lettuce incident. Until this instant, when I googled the definition of the phrase shell-shocked, I thought it referred to shy, Disney-esque shellfish characters. I like my way better.

And we have another lettuce, even smaller than the first.

Someone made a deadly mistake when they put me in charge of lettuce. Baby lettuces are more difficult to care for and keep safe than baby humans are.

Moving on: we have lots of little Cayenne peppers.

I am pleased, excited, and I predict a prolific year for the peppers.

We have more surprise potentilla arenaria wildflowers. These are by our play structure.

My temptation (that I'm resisting) is to mark them with those flags for electrical lines so we don't mow them down.

The best part of having an acre and a half that we can almost basically let go and let grow ("neglect," one might say) is all of the wonderful surprises that randomly grow on their own. I've seen wildflowers, trees, shrubs, and possibly even an occasional fruit or vegetable randomly appear and grow on our property.

The worst part about having a feral acre and a half is the terrible surprises such as poison ivy. I just spent half an hour tracking down and poisoning young poison ivy. I feel like I need a holster to carry my Round Up Poison Ivy Killer.

Coach: this is a business opportunity for you.

Wildflowers, Weeds, and Blessings

Today I want to write about the weeds that look like flowers that we've kept. Please bear with my post-in-progress.

First: my husband loves the spiderwort. He insisted that it's an iris. Admittedly, this is a fascinating and attractive plant that opens and closes daily. This is an apparent bird blessing that appeared in our flower bed.

Many thanks to my sister for identifying this for us.

Next: we have Dame's Rocket all over our property. This one, we don't so much love as we've given up fighting. In many states, this is a nuisance plant.

The Michigan Bear forum was a great help to me in identifying this weed.

Finally, we have this new, five-leafed, adorable wildflower. I'm trying to identify it. There are several little patches of this around, and I think it's so cute.

 

Update: I got excited for a moment, thinking this is Yellow Evening Primrose (sounds important). But I think the leaves of this are wrong. Things it's not: Maryland Golden Aster; Sundrops (would have been cool); Lance-Leaved Tickseed.

Update: I believe this is a buttercup. It may be a prairie buttercup or a swamp buttercup, or it may be celandine (which is a type of buttercup). Or is it a Yellow Gem Potentilla?

Final update: Potentilla Arenaria.