2026 CW39 - Humming Along
As I like to do, we start this week with a zoomed-out view to appreciate our labor from a distance. In this edition of the garden blog, we first take a look at the front St. Augustine lawn, appreciating its density and lushness late in the season, as well as the SunPatien hanging baskets, the new Wintergreen Boxwood hedge, the Bubblegum Supertunias, the towering Maples, and more!
Humming Along!
Our cover story this week focuses on the abundance of Hummingbirds we find in our backyard this time of year. Last week I provided a glimpse into the lives of these remarkable little animals, but I was not satisfied with the pictures I captured. This week I make up for that, collecting some (at least to me) remarkably large depictions of these very tiny creatures.
Here we have an incredible view of a young Ruby-throated Hummingbird perched upon a feeder at the back porch. These are tiny birds, measuring only about 3 inches long, and are quite shy! Capturing such an up-close look of one was challenging and took quite some persistence! I am constantly impressed with what my [now 11 years old!] Nikon D7200 is capable of after over 52,000 shutter releases.
Throughout my evening stalking these zipping little creations, I was blessed enough to capture a few in-flight moments such as this one showing off the full extension of the powerful, yet light wings. Each wing of the hummingbird weighs approximately 0.1 grams, or about the same as a pinch of salt.
The entire bird itself weighs only about 3 grams. To put that into perspective, a U.S. penny weighs only 2.5 grams!
Hummingbirds spend about 20 minutes perched for every hour of flight during the day. That’s an incredible statistic when you consider that for the flying period they are sustaining 50 wing flaps PER SECOND.
Given their timid disposition, I had plenty of opportunities to capture them resting as they waited for me to vacate their feeding area. Here you can see one resting on the remainders of the Chinese Yard Long Bean trellis.
Spray and Pray!
Most of the time I like to keep our drip irrigation controlled and intentional, but this week the garden had other ideas! While walking the front beds, I noticed two aggressive leaks, spraying the surrounding mulch and plants.
To fix these leaks, I use a small coupler designed to join two of these 1/4” lines together.
To repair the leaks, you simply have to perform a cut at the leak location and insert the coupler into either end of the now separated tube. This repair is super simple and takes next to no time, but is one of those small, annoying tasks (our friend Loren calls these “Avoidance Tasks”) that you can find yourself putting off for weeks for no reason.
Maintaining the Premises
The garden has been THIRSTY in the last few weeks as we have dealt with an extended period of late summer heat with limited rainfall. Thanks to that, we have found ourselves needing to provide irrigation to areas of the yard that are usually fine without. Here you can see us using a sprinkler to water the back St. Augustine lawn as well as some young Crape Myrtle trees.
Maintenance is not only in the present, but also in the future! In the back corner of the yard, our Compost Bins are working hard to ensure that our garden can receive the natural kick start it needs come next spring! Here you can see our bins are HOT thanks to a continuous deposit of fresh green grass clippings providing substantial Nitrogen rich fuel.
Consequential Collapse
As with most weeks in the garden, this one was not without calamity! This week our incredible Luffa Trellis finally fell victim to the overwhelming weight of numerous fruits. Here I provide a flashback to a picture from the CW37 Blog Post showing the trellis erect and lush for reference to understand the severity of this collapse!
The collapse did unfortunately result in the premature demise of several Luffa Fruits.
However, here in the Bosarge garden we are nothing if not persistent! We were able to prop the trellis back up temporarily with the careful installation of an 8ft T-Post. It’s not as cool as the original trellis which you could comfortably walk through, but it will make sure that our fruits make it through the remainder of the season.
Veggie Check-In
Taking a look at the slightly less calamity prone vegetables, we have several refreshing updates!
First of all, let’s check in on Sara’s Yard Tomato! For the first time in blog history, we have a successful yard tomato fruit!
Moving on to the rest of the vegetable garden we have Pumpkins continuing to produce new (and even larger) fall decoration. Up in the raised beds we have our second round of Basil putting on some size. Then back to the in-ground vegetable beds we have an absolute champ of a Bell Pepper plant continuing to put out fresh peppers after an entire summer of production.
Pets and Pests
In a special edition of “Pets and Pests” we have a LOT of garden supervisor portraits to share. However, I first need to re-introduce a familiar “Pest”. Here we have the caterpillar form of the Giant Swallowtail Butterfly finding its home on our Lime Tree.
I mentioned that this was a special edition of the garden supervisors, and I do not plan to disappoint! Thanks to an abundant selection of pet pictures this week, each of our favorite garden supervisors gets TWO portraits each this week.
Some of you may not be aware, but Chewbacca actually lives at our home disguised as our friendly pup Henry.
In a more formal and regal setting Henry seems far more suburban!
Speaking of regal, here’s a fantastic (probably my favorite of her) picture of Scout resting amongst the Jew Plants.
Do not be deceived! Most of the time she can be found in a playful position or one like this where she is stalking birds from the camouflage of the Purple Fountain Grass.
Speaking of Regal, they do not come more imperial than Yoda, the King of the Garden.
This particular shot was captured completely blind, holding my camera down at the floor level and shooting up at Yoda with no viewfinder or live view. It was a first take and I was so pleased with the result that I had to share it here!
