It's a Good Day

You're probably pretty tired of pictures of tomatoes and squash and stuff, so sorry, but I can't help myself. And since this is my blog, I figure oh, what the hell, I like squash, I will take some pictures of them. So here is a picture of some squash. These are pattypan, which are very delicious and mild-tasting, as squash go. They are very enjoyable.

This is what they are "supposed" to look like when you pick them (meaning, ideal size):

This way, they can be cooked and eaten whole, and they are good!! I don't always pick them at this size, though, because I feel like that's too small. So I will usually leave them until they are sliceable size, and then I'll slice them and cook them, and they are still so good. But sometimes, when I'm feeling wild, I will leave them longer, to stuffable size like this:That's when they are still tender and yummy and can be cooked by stuffing them with something (I like breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese with balsamic vinaigrette---YUM!) and putting them in the oven. They are big enough to hold in the palm of your hand, and weigh about a half pound each. They are a meal in themselves.

Then sometimes I like to not see a squash for--oh, I don't know--three weeks or something, and then go out and be surprised because there's a squash there that I didn't see, and all it's been doing is getting BIGGER, and it looks like this:
Here are some pics for scale. The littlest on the biggest.

This thing is like a work of art. It's 3 lbs, 2 oz. I don't want to eat it. How long do you think it will last if I just put it on a table as something to look at? Is there a squash taxidermist anywhere? Does anyone know? Geez, I just want to look at it all day, it's so pretty.

I did get many other things from the garden today, though, too. Here's a picture of them all. I am SO proud (can you tell?)

93 cherry tomatoes, 3 zucchini, a bunch of other "ugly" tomatoes, more pattypan, the huge pattypan, and I even braved the huge spider's lair and picked some beans (thankfully I didn't see the spider). Wow. I am super happy today!!

Turns out I am sharing my tomatoes with the groundhogs, though.

They got two of them. Furry buggers. Least they could do is eat the whole thing. What a waste, just eating a chunk and leaving it. Now that I know, I will have to find a way to combat them.

Ok, that's it for me today. I've got a million things to do. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

.....And Today I Took Them Back Off

Actually, I took them back off on Tuesday. Oh well. I didn't think it would last. The heat is back, but it's bite is gone. That is a relief. I got to do a good amount of weeding outside, which needed to be done desperately. At least the gardens are tidier.

Yesterday, I found the biggest, creepiest spider in the beans. I am not a fan of spiders, so I am very hesitant (to say the least) to go back into the beans and harvest. I will have to be really careful. And wear thick gloves. Shudder

Before I found said creepy huge spider, I did get a nice harvest.

The little brownish tomatoes are the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. They are the ones I had to wrestle with. They have now grown about 2 feet past the supports and don't look like they are going to stop anytime soon. At least they are productive! The big huge yellow tomato in the front is a yellow Brandywine. They are ugly tomatoes, from an aesthetic standpoint, but they are huge. This one is one of the larger ones. It weighed 1 1/2 pounds all by itself. I called it Big Bertha. Then we ate it. YUM!

I hope you are all having a good week!

Wrestling Lycopersicon lycopersicum

I do think it could be a new sport--Tomato Wrestling. It could be BIG. I mean BIG. There just needs to be a big name to endorse it and another to do the whole announcing thing, and we're all set. And the bonus would be that anyone could participate. No steroids needed, just a person, some scissors, some stakes and a lot of ties. It could be timed to see who can get the tomatoes to behave in the least amount of time. And the better you get at it, you move up to taller and vinier tomatoes that are flopping all over each other and more and more tangled. That'd be a feat of strength, stamina, and brains. What an event!

I wrestled the tomatoes yesterday, as I said I was going to. 2 hours. They were really tangled. I am ready for the big time, baby. I think I could go all the way.

Let me show you. Or should I say;

LET'S GET RRREADY TO RRRRRRUMBLE!!!!!!

The "before" shot. Tomatoes, tomatoes, everywhere. Mainly on top of one another. But also on top of the peppers and squash. They were hogging the sun.

See that low part of the "mound" there? Those are the cherry tomatoes. They got so tall they fell over and continued to grow into one another. When I planted all these guys, they were in nice rows. I was determined to find the rows again....

Can you see the tomatoes on the left? There on the garden path? Can you see the garden path? No, no, you can't. I know. This is what I'd be stepping over everytime I went into the garden. A little TOO snug.

Though for some reason Blogger wants to put this picture upside-down (???), I would like to point out here that I DID stake these suckers about a month ago. This is a 4 foot stake, lost in the foliage. I would have to extract it and a few others like it....

To prevail!! Hah! Here are those unruly guys, 2 hours later, sort of behaving.

And finally, I had gotten both the unruly cherry tomatoes to behave, and then all their compatriots next to them. Ha!!!
I would just like to point out that the vines of these tomatoes are actually TALLER than the stakes I put them on....
And to give you some idea for how tall that is, the stakes are 8 feet tall. If I pounded 6 inches into the ground, I was having a good day. So a 7 1/2 foot stake. And a what, 8 foot tomato?

But I unearthed the peppers. Poor sunless little guys. They looked relieved. Now either they'll make peppers or die of shock. Hmmmm.... Well, either way. At least they can breathe. :)

And I reclaimed the garden path. Woo hoo!!

So, totally worth it. Why is this a sport? Well, because there is a lot at stake! Ha ha ha!!

Ok, really now. Tomatoes are actually very fragile. The vines break easily, and the tomatoes can be damaged easily, or fall off. So it takes a bit of finessing, especially if the vines have gotten as long as these vines have gotten. I untangled vines on the garden path that were from the tomato in the back of the garden. And they were growing under vines from some of the tomatoes in the middle of the garden, the tomatoes comingling freely. Darn cominglers. So be prepared to have some tomatoes fall off.

And don't panic about it, because you can still harvest them and bring them in to ripen. My favorite way is to spread them out (that's important) on some newspaper on the counter. It takes a while, but why waste tomatoes, right?

As careful as I was, I did break a vine:

I don't worry too much about that, though, because they are resilient, and I've had tomatoes in the past grow on vines that were severed almost in half. They actually develop fine and don't seem to mind the break, as long as there is still a way to get the nutrients to the rest of the plant at that point.
Speaking of, this was a vine that was broken quite a while ago. It was growing fine and actually sprouted tomatoes on it. Then I broke it off totally (oops). But here's something else you may not know about tomatoes:

They develop roots all along their stems (see those little yellow nubby hairs--they be roots!), so they can be rooted in a pot of dirt if you break off a branch. This will usually work just fine with a young branch. I don't have much hope for this branch, though. It's an "older" vine, but mainly I don't think it will work because it's supporting tomatoes. That's a lot to support on root hairs. So I'm thinking this one will probably not make it. Dang. But I will give it a couple of days, just in case. Right now it looks very shocky. I don't have much hope, but I'd kick myself if I didn't try. Oh, and another fun thing about tomato wrestling? You WILL get dirty! Very, very dirty! What more can you want?

I think I may be onto something here. You start with easy tomatoes, and as you conquer them, you move onto the behemoths. You lose points for tomatoes that fall off, and points for vines that break. There's an opportunity to use your strength to pound in the stakes, your stamina to keep at it, and your brains to figure out just WHERE the damn vines belong and to which plant, and then how to best tie them to the stake. Extra points for deftness with the scissor/tie handle and how the ties are applied to the vines.

Hmmmmmmm.......

Well, I think it's got potential.

At Least it Wasn't 95 Degrees!

It was cooler (87 degrees--woo hoo)Sunday, so I did some more canning. That canner is getting a workout THIS year!



Let's just say I had a bounty of zucchini. So I pickled it.

I also put up some plum conserve, which is on the left in this picture. The 10 pints on the right would be the zucchini pickles. The middle loaf is zucchini bread. There were 2 loaves, but one had been "attacked" as soon as I took it out of the oven. My daughter has a previously undiscovered love of zucchini bread. So in total, I got 10 pints of pickles, an "overflow" jam jar of pickles (with the red top in the back--no I didn't put that in the canner--it would have exploded, methinks) and 2 loaves of zucchini bread, and froze a bunch. That was the harvest from the day before we left and the day we came back...... Did I mention I had a bounty of zucchini?

Finally the tomatoes are coming, so you see some in the front in this picture. I have a PLETHORA of tomatoes, but they are almost all still green. These ripened while we were away, so I picked them. They are a variety of cherry tomato called Chocolate Cherry. Bet you can't guess why I picked them, huh? Anyway, I grew them from seed, and the plants are now 6 1/2 feet tall, and loaded with tomatoes. And falling all over each other, which is a pain in my butt. My mission today is to buy some 7 foot stakes and get them off of each other. Then I may be able to walk in the vegetable garden again.

That's going to be my day today. What are you all up to?

Summer Garden Pictures!

Let's take a walk around the yard and look at the flowers and plants this lovely summer morning!

The Artemisia and Sedum that grow on the path as we walk down from the back deck.

The garden at the entrance to the vegetable garden. The Irises are tired. :(

Other side of the entrance. You can kind of see the tomato forest behind on the right.

The garden by the driveway.

One side of the foundation plantings. I'm still waiting for them to cover up the foundation!

The garden by the lamppost.

Echinacea. One of my favorites. This one is a double, which is why the centers seem to be sprouting petals. They are!!

Cardinal climber flower on the old chair.

The other foundation planting.

You could get lost back there!!

And around the other side of the house.

Pretty Butterfly Bush!! Can you see the cute little garden shed back there?

Oh, there it is!!

The plants in the cages in front weren't bad, by the way. My plants are all pretty well-behaved! I guess I brought them up right. :) They are little blueberries, which are irresistable to pretty much all the wildlife around (I discovered). So, we "cage" them for their own protection. At least, until they can hold their own with hungry bunnies and deer!

Thanks for coming on this tour with me. Enjoy your day!

Probably Should

...tell you all about the quilt show or how the summer is going or something, but it's a lazy day. So instead, I'll show you all some pictures of the vegetable garden.
Enjoy!

The bean teepee, currently under attack by Japanese Beetles. F-ing beetles. Spent a lot of today flicking them into a can of soapy water for a drowning. OOOOOOOOh, I hates them!!!

Little Boy and Clifford sitting on the little bench next to the pat-a-pan squash.

Little Boy again (and Clifford). The squash mountain continues on his other side there with yellow crookneck and zucchini.

The tomato forest.

Little Boy by the strawberries.

See how those tomatoes tower? They're about my height, and I'm 5'7" or so. Little Boy could get lost in there! I'm glad he's got Clifford!

Beans and herbs and the mints in a row.

The beets, ready for harvesting.

The beets, harvested. Oh, and a couple of peppers.

Little Girl and the beet harvest. What an armful!!