More Eggs!

Yesterday was so hot, and I really just wanted to be doing something active, so in the afternoon my husband agreed to take me for a walk... around the mile loop in our local mall.  We bought a 5 gallon stock pot for him during the trip because we will shortly be attempting our own home brewing.  When we returned, we found this...

Here is a little video of her digging the nest.  I've never been able to get this close, or as good lighting when Eleanor was digging.

Nadine was digging her first (that we've ever seen) nest.  It was nearly 8 when we got home, and she was still digging around ten, but when I went out there this morning, the hole was perfectly covered. Definitely was not a test site. If I had not seen her digging, there is no way I would have noticed this, other than the fact that the basil plant she was digging by is now gone.

There have been loads of ant hills by the compost pile and in that general area, and even though she laid her nest in the ground and not the compost pile like Eleanor does, we still felt it was too risky to leave it back there, so I got out everything I needed to bring the eggs inside to incubate.

First egg found

I mark the top of each egg so that I keep the top of the egg in the same orientation when I place them in the deli container.

First three out

Still three to go!

I was surprised to find six eggs in this nest! She is considerably smaller than Eleanor, and her eggs were slightly smaller as well, it's just hard to imagine six of these things fitting inside of such a small shell.  She was chowing down while I was digging up her nest.  She probably did not have room to eat with all of these inside of her.  Her eating behavior has been a bit different than last year, so it will be neat to see if she becomes more "outgoing" again.

Nadine's eggs on the left, Eleanor's eggs in the two containers on the right

All of the eggs with the lid on, with a thermometer that also checks the humidity. Turtle eggs absorb water through their shells, and do best under humid conditions.  Thermometer reads 82% relative humidity, and 78 degrees.

In gardening news, I had four male blossoms open today (two of which were a set of twins!) and two female (one yellow squash and one zucchini) blossoms, so I went ahead and hand pollinated!  The other zucchini in this picture had no male, but look at how big it is anyway!

It's going to be a scorcher of a week! I went ahead and tied the tomato plants up to the stakes again this morning. It was rather windy and truly threatening of storms that never came.  Good to have some work done though!  Happy Gardening!