Goodbye July

Hard to believe that summer is almost over. The fall school clothing and Halloween items are already well stocked in the stores. We are anticipating the new school year and are in denial that Maggie is going into 4th grade and Sam 1st and that little Amelia is already 4 months old. Crazy. I gave up hope on our tomatoes this year. The plants are tall and leggy. We have had a few ripe tomatoes so far and we're not impressed. Thank God for farmer's market. The herbs however are enjoying this cool summer and we have enjoyed making homemade pesto a lot. The beans look like they're doing well and we should be picking a bunch any day now. I love the way the vines are up against the fence, creating a green wall. The sunflowers are tall and happy. Never a favorite of mine but I am enjoying them more and more every year. They happen to face our 90 year old neighbor's house and she looks forward to seeing them. They bring her so much pleasure. We now plant them for her. The bright light cosmos are indeed bright orange, beautiful and wild. All of them reseeded from last year. They even managed to reseed over the fence along the creek. Beautiful. looking forward to our first acorn squash, Sam's plant is amazing! Our vacation away with family will happen soon and when we return, I will be mapping out the winter garden. I already know that one bed will be full of onions and another with garlic and of course we'll have plenty of lettuce. For now though, I'll enjoy these last few days of summer and those sunflowers.

 

 

 

 

Our First Potatoes

We harvested our first potatoes yesterday. We planted the seeds in early Feb and didn't know what to expect. Amelia was born in March and needless to say, the potatoes fell victim to neglect. Not a good thing with container gardening. The plants never bloomed and actually withered away altogether. Yesterday we dumped the container expecting to see nothing and we found a handful of potatoes from each container. It was pretty exciting! We are definitely going to grow them again and I imagine with more attention and care, we will have even more to harvest.