I started my annual hunt for the wild grapes, AKA muscadines, with hopes of a big fresh batch of wine in my future. Sadly, my hunt so far has turned up very few grapes. I'm not sure whats going on, I don't even see any signs that grapes were ever on the vine. This may be in part to the crazy weather we had this year, we had some pretty heavy rains in the spring. You may have seen the news reports of the flooding that occurred in SE Texas, well let me just say it was bad, most of the farmer's I run into at the markets all said that they were two or three weeks behind in planting, so let's just say it was bad! Maybe all that rain stressed the vines and caused them to abort flowers, or maybe the pollinator hoards didn't want to get out and get wet, whatever it was it has not been good for the grapes.
I spent about three hours Saturday afternoon combing thru my back pasture, along the fence lines, thru the trees, looking for my beloved grapes and not a single grape anywhere, except on my vine that I planted, and that's just not enough for wine!
Wasn't Looking for Watermelons
With utter disappointment I went to walk thru the garden just o see how bad everything was burnt up, I guess we spent all our rain credits in the Spring, we haven't had any good rain in about a month.
I found a bunch of Okra plants that were pretty well gone, you know it's bad when the okra plants dry up and turn brown!
Funny thing about gardening, if we could get the cultivated crops to grow like the weeds do, we could feed the planet twice over!
I looked further thru the weeds, not really expecting to find anything, and damn near tripped over something in the field. I parted the weeds and to my amazement found a watermelon, I looked further and found several more, about 8 good sized watermelons in total. I was shocked to say the least.
I was more amazed at how the plants looked, even growing in the dense cover of all the weeds and grass, they were green and lush. I rounded up several of the largest ones to take back and eat, the not so great looking ones will go to the chickens!
Wasn't Looking for Sunflower Seeds
Close to this field where the watermelons were, we had planted a couple rows of sunflowers. the sunflowers were about done as well, although there were a few that still had some flowers.
The rest of them had shown their best work a few weeks back, but that doesn't mean they were done for. Another row of giant sunflowers had come and gone, and in their place was a wilted and droopy looking flower head that just looked blah!
The real beauty of Sunflowers comes at the end of the life cycle, when you dig past the ugly remnants of this once gorgeous flower and find that it has left you a gift.
Just an ugly flower you say? Wait, let's dig a little deeper.
What's that I see, sunflower seeds, bunches of em. These sunflowers where about 8 to 9 inches across, I didn't count all the seeds, but there are a bunch of em!
If you had a mind to , you could let these dry out, shake the heads and get yourself a mess of sunflower seeds, i'm not a big sunflower seeds person my self, but my chickens sure are. They will dine on sunflowers for weeks!
Certainly wasn't looking for this Beast!
I found this monster in the cucumber vines next to the sunflowers, this joker was about three inches long, everything is bigger in Texas! This is known around here as a Lubber grasshopper. Big, ugly and hard to kill, you can step on them and they look at you like your stupid!
I will keep looking for grapes, hopefully I will find some at one of my other foraging grounds!
Thanks for looking!