ooh! ooh i love your garden blogs and your caterpillar pictures!

CAN I ASK A QUESTION HERE IT IS:

i am a stupid. i planted lettuce seeds yesterday. it is hot. if i move the little bed with the lettuce in it to a shadier location, will they do alright or is everything doomed to just sprout and bolt?

you have such great eyes to see tiny little catepillars!

Hee hee! So cute!

I put in okra yesterday, and eggplant. I hope they do well this year. I had trouble in the new beds last year.

@Smarticus - 

It may depend on the kind of lettuce you planted (there are cool season and warm season lettuces -- some bolt more readily than others) and how hot your weather is going to be for the next few weeks. But the short answer is that a lot of gardeners extend the lettuce season by using shade cloth to keep things cooler as the weather warms up, so based on that, I'm guessing that as long as the shadier area still gets enough sun for good growth and you can keep it well watered (another issue in the heat!), it might be worth a shot. After all, a lot of hot season stuff needs full sun, so it's not like you could grow sunflowers or tomatoes in a shady-ish bed -- you might as well try to use the space creatively. And you may well be able to keep it from bolting long enough to get some lovely "baby lettuce" for salads. I find lettuce relatively easy to grow and the seed is usually inexpensive, so it might be a fun experiment, if nothing else.

Nicely done! It's amazing to see these great shots-especially in seeing how ((tiny)) these guys are- the master macro photographer at work!

I've finally got my garden up and running these past few weeks. I've got tomatoes, peppers (several spicy varieties) and pumpkins coming up. There is also a flower bed of sunflowers, hollyhocks and foxglove, just peeking out of the soil. I still have one more bed of herbies to plant- I need that basil to wrap around the cherry tomatoes!