Europe Trip 2013

Sharing a few photos from our recent trip to Europe. 

I'm going to try to make individual posts for each location.

 But here is a very brief overview of where we went. :)

We started with a visit to the French Riviera. 

We visited Antibes and Nice, France.  

 

Then we visited Pisa and Florence, Italy.

 

The next day we went to Rome.

 

Next we went to Pompeii and also took a beautiful tour of the Almalfi Coast.

We spent two days in Venice.

 

Then we visited Dubrovnik, Croatia.

We also went to Barcelona, Spain. This is Guell Park.

And lastly, we visited Paris, France.

Harvest + Good News

I have good news to report. It seems like some of the squash zucchini plants made it through the squash borer's infestation! The plants seem to be thriving again. : ) Thanks for all the tips. Although, the squash it is producing shrivels up and dies while it is still tiny. I think this might be because it has been way too hot lately! You can see in the background that the tomato plants are struggling with the heat too.

I think I am going to say that the cucumber plants are a bust! No cucumbers has been produced so far, well not any edible ones. The few that grew went from green to yellow and then fell off. I was waiting for them to get bigger... maybe I was supposed to pick them when they were green.. I don't know, they didn't look fully formed to me! I will browse around for pics of what a cucumber is supposed to look like.

The tomato plants are still producing plenty of tomatoes! We picked over 50 one day! And they taste good too. I think next year, we will plant more tomato plants.

I will add a pic of my jalapeño plant later but as you can see, it is producing peppers!!

That's about it for now.

Garden DISASTER! : (

So I have been MIA from the blog for a few days and I am afraid I come back with bad news. We were out of town for a few days and that was enough for the garden to fall apart. I should have known better. I had read about squash bugs and squash borers, but figured that the plants were strong enough to withstand anything. I was totally wrong! Bugs show no mercy. By the time we finally got around to checking on the garden- mostly everything was DEAD. We had to pull our beloved squash plants that had taken us so much work and so many days to grow. I was devastated. I still am. This sucks. : ( I know it is mostly our fault for being not being observant...I guess now we know for next year. I should have used stronger insecticides- guess the organic spray was not enough.

Pictures of the destruction and the stupid bugs that caused it all. 

 

Wondering how that sawdust from squash bugs borers looks like? It looks like this.

Bugs we found around the garden:

I didn't even know this kind of damage was possible. That black thing is an ugly slug! They ate half of this squash plant and carved out the rest of it.

I guess the only good news is that our tomato plants are still thriving.

Here is what we got from them : 65 tomatoes.

The cucumber is doing OK. But I wouldn't say it is doing well. The leaves are turning whitish and looks like mold or something is on them. But the cucumbers are starting to form.

The strawberries are also making a comeback but the harvest looks disappointing. My husband decided to throw some plastic over his strawberry plants to protect them from the birds and I think it worked, but he accidentally put some of the plastic over the cucumber plant and I think this is why they are suffering now because the ones that were not touched by the plastic seem to be doing well (see first pic).

My jalapeño plant is the one thing that seems to be thriving! I am so glad I planted it, otherwise this would be a pretty depressing post.I think I will try the first jalapeño this weekend.