Well I got a fair amount done, even if I have more to do.
The chayote is in! And more importantly it’s staked to it’s new trellis. This nice mixed bed is coming along nicely. These tomatoes of all my tomatoes are the best looking. This bed may end up being the tomato bed with all it’s afternoon sunshine. I don’t think the chayote and the basil mind sharing.
Here’s my mystery plant, a mystery no more! It’s an Ugni, or Chilean Guava. Also known as a strawberry myrtle, it’s a south american relative of the guava that has tiny little tasty fruits. Apocryphally, it’s fruits were the favorite of Queen Victoria.
I don’t know about that, but it likes acid soil and can tolerate some foggy weather, so I’m all for it.
It can grow up to six feet if you baby it, and I intend to baby it.
I want some little fruits!
And here is my beautiful bird bee bath. The rocks are there to give the bees something to sit on while they sip. They’re not really swimmers.
Why do I want to keep the bees happy?
Well, because they haven’t been doing their job! The reason the pumpkins were shriveling off the vine was that the plant was aborting them due to incomplete fertilization. (H/T to my manager at work who figured that out) So I had to play the bee!
Pictured, one beautiful baby pumpkin that I hand fertilized, next to a shriveled up one that I did not.
So clearly the bees need some incentive, and I hope the bee bath provides it for them.
Joking aside, it’s just been so wet. As I type this we had rain this morning, and the day before. In August!
So I think I know why the bees are under-performing.
Oh well, more work to do!
The Neanderthal Gardens 
That Chilean guava is not much of a mystery if it has a label on it! They are prettier than tasty. The fruit is nice, but quite sparse. You can baby it, but should not water it too regularly. It can rot. If you noticing it getting wobbly, you should water it less. It will get more resilient as it matures.
Are bees dirty?
Well now that they have a bath they wont be 🙂 It’s good for bees to have a water source, and since they can communicate to their fellows where things are, it should mean more bees overall for my garden. Thanks for the tips on the Chilean guava, we had one in stock at the store and I can’t resist something I can have year round. Also it’s pretty so there’s that.