In article ,
rachael simpson wrote:

picked my first mess of dixielee and purple hull peas this morning. had
to fight the fire ants to get them. picked yet some more string beans
too. (sorry y'all, these are the blue lake variety!) the crook-neck
squash and garden peas have bout played out. cukes are about under the
weather too. butter beans looking good, but not ready for picking
yet. should be ready in about a week. cut quite a few collards last
week, so none of those ready to cut again. no bell peppers either, nice
looking plants, but they put out about 6 peppers, no more since. plenty
of nice green tomatoes for frying, none have made it to the ripe stage yet.

had a run in with a 4 foot 8 inch (yes, i measured!) cottonmouth this
morning too, looked like it had just had breakfast. it's now hanging in
the oak tree across the road........

A cottonmouth. Hmm. *shudder*

I'd rather put up with a short gardening season than
deal with snakes.

My Blue Lake beans are just coming up, in the greenhouse.
(Yes, my season is *that* short.) But the 'mater plants
are loaded with fruit and the yellow crookneck has both
fruit and blooms on it.

I overwintered a Sweet Hungarian Pepper in the kitchen
last year. It grew fruit until very late in the winter,
looked crappy for awhile, then started cranking out
peppers again in about March, when we got daylight
again. It's almost 3' tall and looking pretty good.

The daylilies & sweet peas are all in bloom. I'm happy : )

Jan in Alaska