More lovely photos from Central Indiana and the State Fair. Our daughter went through a children’s program called “Little Hands on the Farm,” and it helped kids learn about the growing, harvesting, transporting and selling crops on the farm. It was a wonderful thing and Kallie loved it. She even got to “milk” a fake cow!
We’re enjoying our time here on the farm in Indiana. The weather is warm again – 95 yesterday – and we had fun at the State Fair. Here are a few pictures of the farm and our darling daughter. She’s meeting for the first time the filly she named this Spring — the blonde one on the left is the horse she named, Lilly. 
Pride of Barbados
Happy Bloom Day. Technically, I’m not there to see my blooms, but I did take pictures a day early so I could post them. Tomorrow I’ll send some interesting things from central Indiana, where it was 75 degrees when we got off the plan yesterday! Amazing. But they have been as dry as we have been wet, and the crops are not bearing up well at all. The corn is very dry and some of it looks half-dead. It’s going to be a bad year for farmers around here. And the horses have to be fed hay because there isn’t much else for them in the fields. A sad state of affairs. I wish we could have sent them a little of our rain, but I guess that’s just now how it works.
Ecstatic Esperanza
Black Elephant Ears, Esperanza and Angel’s trumpet
Passioinate Plumeria
Well, here are some beans that seem to be very happy — today. But we are leaving tomorrow for Indiana for 10 days — I’m not sure how happy they will be when we return. I have a good friend who has promised to water all my babies and keep an eye on things, but in this heat, it really is a lot of work to get it all done every day. For me, it’s a labor of love (most of the time!) but for someone else, it’s just another chore. My parents will come pick the ripening tomatoes and cukes, so I hope someone will be enjoying the ongoing harvest.
I’ll post some from Indiana — have some Austin things I still want to share and will post for bloom day, and I might send some sights from the State Fair and the farm. It’s so different there – I love staring at peoples’ gardens as we drive by, amazed at all the different plants they are able to grow in a very different climate.
Ciao for now~
I saw this little fella out front last week and from further afar, he looked just like a baby hummingbird. But my dad told me about a hummingbird moth he’d seen years ago and suspected from my description that was what I had seen. And lo, and behold, the very next night, I was surfing on gardening blogs and I saw a beautiful picture of a hummingbird moth, and realized it was EXACTLY what I had seen. And amazing.
So, tonight when I was walking around surveying my little garden kingdom as I like to do, there were 2 of them out front. I raced inside, got my husband’s camera and captured these shots. And, truly, aside from telling you my little story, all I really have to say, is: wow.
As a gardener, it really is the little things for me. It’s the little things (weeds) that drive me crazy and make it impossible for me to sit in my back yard and relax without staring them down or getting up to pull them! And it’s the precious little clusters of border and filler plants that bring me such pleasure. I ordered these tiny plants from a catalog in early spring, to fill a narrow strip of border along the front walk way. They haven’t done much in all these months and I’m not sure why, but they are so delicate and pretty I can’t much fault them. They’re trying, and I guess that’s what counts. 
The lantana seems rather ordinary, but it performs so beautifully and I love all the rich blends of colors, the orange-reds, the confetti, the fucsia and orange, they love our heat and are finally recovering from all of our rainy, gray days.