Harvesting in August

My garden keeps feeding us and the joy it brings me daily is only matched by the excitement of "what am I going to plant next year?" - because, people, the 2011 list has already been started. But that's for another post. Today I am going to share some of our latest goodies:


Lovely, gorgeous, succulent, homegrown vegetables and fruits.


I have to pick the green beans every three days, maximum, otherwise I'm completely overrun by them.


Our chard is cooked just like spinach, usually sauteed with tons of garlic!


Our pear tree is heavy with fruit, lots of pear tarts for us this year!


The strawberries are few but delicious, even the tiny ones are full of flavor, as if they are concentrated.


Our zucchini is delicious no matter how big it gets.

I am collecting pear recipes, for obvious reasons, so if you have a good one, please send it my way!

Blessings

I have been counting my blessings - I do all the time - but since my beloved dad's passing earlier this month, I try and counter the grieving with the rejoicing, for life does, indeed, go on for the rest of us, and knowing Dad, he would hate to see me sunken with sadness.

I am very happy dad got to see the veggie garden fairly recently, a couple of months ago in fact, and he was awed by everything we had growing. My poor little dahlias were struggling at best, but I think I have some new influence up there yonder, because ever since dad left us, the dahlias have been blooming and blooming:


Our corn, too, has already delighted us with its sweetness. Last year we only got a few ears, but this time there's about a dozen almost ready to pick - this was the first one:


The Concord grapes are growing - I am meant to make jelly with these and we'll see whether that actually happens but it's been nice to watch them grow from little pinhead-sized dots to their current state.


We've had tons of onions already, not only the spring onions (their season is now done) but some of these yellow and white beauties. They've gone into omelets, chicken dishes, even gave one to mom for her stew. They're not the huge onions you see in the market, but that's perfect for us, because one of these is just about the size we usually need.


My Early Girl tomatoes do not disappoint, they are flavorful and have definitely made up for the disappointment of last year, when all I got all year were two marble sized tomatoes. They're doing better on this side of the yard!



The favorites are the strawberries, I can barely pick them and rinse them before they're in one of the boys' mouths. Usually my oldest gets them :D but they're so good and sweet, I can't blame him at all.

We are all enjoying the fruits and veggies from our backyard and next year, we're doing it from seed, baby! I mean to start some heirloom varieties now that I have my fancy potting bench to help me along. I'm already making lists of what I'll get, it's so exciting! When all is said and done, the veggie garden is helping us eat better, because we don't want to waste any of this precious organic produce, and help our boys eat more veggies, not to mention saving a little money off the grocery bill.

I think Dad would be proud. Ok, who am I kidding, I never could do anything wrong in his eyes, so I know he's watching us pick those strawberries and corn and onions and smiling down at us. And that's a blessing to me.

Back from vacay

We had a glorious 10-day vacation and came back to find our little plants were going gangbusters!
My oldest enjoyed the first two strawberries from our plant. He did let me and my husband have a small bite and they were so sweet and juicy! I think another plant may be in our future.

While Sandra, Mo'Nique, and Kathryn . . .

were busy accepting awards and going to swanky post-Oscar parties, me and mine were busy doing some pre-rain partying in the backyard.

My lovely husband got me pretty border flowers for the, uh, border along the deck.


He also got some strawberries, seeing as they are the summer snack of choice for the boys. We get ours from our local strawberry vendor, we often run out in between his visits, so hopefully this plant can fill in the boys' bowls and prevent me from getting those nasty supermarket strawberries, where only the top layer is good and the underneath is a gloppy mess.


My green onions, omigosh, I would LOVE to thank the academy for these beauties, except the academy didn't do anything - my fragrant onions have spruced up many omelets and dinners, not only at my house, but in many others, because I often give them away. As you can see, I can barely keep up with eating what they produce!


But in life, we need more than green onions, i.e. yellow, white, and red onions, so I've planted some of the yellow variety and if they produce half of what my green onions have, I will be incredibly happy.


Despite having the distinction of being the only person who can't grow tomatoes, my husband got me this Early Girl plant, and I will not jinx it by saying anything about expectations or plans for tomatoes.


My lovely chard doesn't seem to be making much progress, I think anything leafy around here just calls to any and all critters that feast on free salad, which brings us to the last picture . . .


This is the new wire fence around our bok choy, which has definitely been feasted on. I actually walked out one day to find two of the neighborhood cats taking turns. I threw an under ripe avocado at them and it worked, but we needed a more permanent solution.

This latest planting cost us around $50 with the wire accounting for roughly $30.