Growing

The heatwave has finally passed, and most of the gardening on the balcony seems to have thrived in it, unlike yours truly. I spent half the day out there today, getting rid of things that weren't going so well (salad gone to flowers and seed, lovely rhubarb chard with something wrong with the leaves, "moth mix" that never flowered, and agastache and lady's bedstraw that never germinated). The five shiso plants I'd moved into one of the big cloth containers was decimated, partly I think by feeding, it doesn't seem to like it. But then I found another possible culprit...

Prime suspect

It was added to the sacrificial mint plant, which has been getting all the caterpillars I find. Yes, I know I should just throw them of the balcony or something. I found this big green one on the salad, and a tiny green one in the shiso as well. It seems to have a voracious appetite though, as it had eaten its way through half a leaf many times its size a few hours later.

Out of the salad, on to the mint

Former and current residents

No new female flowers on the pumpkin plants for the last few days, and although one of the bulges underneath the female flowers definitely isn't growing, and one I'm not sure about, one of them seems to be bigger every time we look. 

Future pumpkin

The flowers are lovely, it's a shame they only last one day.

Still trying to take over the balcony.

And in other news, I really wish Coke would stop messing with their bottle labels. I don't want to walk around with something with "Selfie Queen" written on it. This one... I don't even know.