Last week of July

Things are starting to ripen faster than we can eat them!

Let's see... The tomatoes (cherry & yellow pear) are ripening like mad. G has a food dehydrator she dragged out of a closet somewhere... Yesterday she started Romas. And we can't keep up eating the small red seedless grapes, so she threw those in. They make raisins that are tiny but to die for. Haven't tried Grandmother's pickle recipe yet. (Oh my... I'm probably letting the pickling cukes go bad in depths of the vegetable crisper drawer.) What else... Eggplant! We have already harvested 5 perfect globe eggplants. G made a dish with zucchini, tomato, onion and eggplant that was fabulous. Then we gave several away. Swiss chard... we have a huge patch which has just been effortless. As hard as we are fighting for squash of any kind, it is hard to stop and appreciate the huge, strapping greens. Had some for dinner the other night on the spur of the moment.

*G harvested some of the chilis, roasted and peeled them and froze them, I think. Basil--those are huge. G made a batch of pesto & we froze it. (That was 10 days ago. Ancient history--grin.)


*Next wave will be string beans. I would say "green," but we actually planted pencil thin wax beans and a tri-color mix that will ripen first... purple beans... they are SOOOO cute. They are about an inch long at the moment, big around as the electric wires that go to the average outlet box. We also have 2 kinds of green beans, but I haven't seen much flower activity on them yet.

*Sweet potato vines finally look happy... we heard that they take up a lot of room, and so far they were staying close to home so we wondered if they were languishing in the heat, or not liking our cruddy soil.



Wilt. Lost all the sugar baby watermelons, several squash plants, and recently 2 pepper plants (not even in the garden proper). : (
G's pink rose has the grunge. : ( Maybe the rust spread from the hollyhocks nearby. Should figure out how to deal with that.
Beans, coming along, coming along, coming along!
Sunchokes, 8' tall, but no sign of blossoms. ?! Amaranth at the back is short but has handsome seed heads.
Morning glories are a thick rope burying the front side of the garden fence.
Green beans--also a thick rope.

Little or no rain recently. G has spent her life watering (wonder if it is starting to feel that way to her?).

Drying the grapes has made scrumptious raisins though. And we have pretty high hopes for drying the Romas for winter consumption. Need to try fresh salsa and bread/butter pickles.

Bought a 5-gal Crape Myrtle at CostCo ($12). Excited about it!