Green

It's high summer and the garden is in full swing.  You can take that literally - we used the old swingset for our fence and gate posts!  We're very use-it-up types and rarely buy materials for such projects.  Those are the cukes right behind the gate; they take less room if you give them something to climb. 














They like it just fine.

The asparagus is long finished and is setting seed - hooray for "volunteers!"  Asparagus from the garden is one of the earth's finest blessings and cannot be appreciated unless you've grown it yourself - even then, words don't suffice.  It's a perennial and if you let it seed it propagates, so in theory this patch will still be bearing in 50 years!

Only one ripe tomato so far - Heaven - but lots more on the way.  And yes, hubby does occasionally make use of my strings.

And the green beans are just now getting serious about production.

This Spring, I bought a couple of artichoke plants on a whim; the seller told me they probably wouldn't come to fruition given our short summers but that the foliage alone was worth it.  They are pretty cool looking!

And look - one of them is bearing!  Artichokes!  In Connecticut!

We have a separate bed for the squash and tomatoes; they're such expansionists that we gave them their own country.  What to do with the bounty?  Give it away of course - that's what Summer Squash and Zucchini is for - and put some up:

Our first pickles!  Just one batch to start.  6 out of 8 jars sealed properly, so we'll have two jars of refrigerator pickles to try in a few days; the rest will have to wait for several weeks at least.  Look how well hubby packs his jars!

Mine were just as tightly packed but much less prettiful.

My paternal grandfather had about a third of an acre of land:  the lot was occupied by the house, a small front yard, a tiny grass patch with my grandmother's laundry line and a picnic table ... and a garden.  The sidewalk to the garage in back bisected his garden, which took the bulk of his lot.  Ours is miniscule in comparison - the main garden is probably 12 x 20 feet - piddling.  Grammy had rows and rows of jars in her cellar each year; as a child I used to love going down there to fetch something and to run my hand along the rows, looking at all the colors and shapes.  I'm not at all like Grammy - in oh, so many ways - but I like to think I'll have at least one litle row to savor this winter!