Tomatoes and more

We just had two very nice days, allowing me to mow again. I haven't had to spend a dime on mowing this year, luckily. The weather had cooled off once every 10 days or so to allow me to keep up!

A few leaves are falling already. Leaves turning and autumn is one reason I wanted to move back east. (Another was fishing, and I've been fishing exactly zero times so far--who has time?)

I have bought all the mulch I'll need and am about to spread it in the rear gardens. Only the side garden remains that needs weeding. Depending on how you count them, I have about 7 flower/bush beds.

I put together a rough plan for next year's veggie garden. 4 x 16 is what I plan to build, a raised bed fenced with chicken wire all around, plus the 4 x 4 bed I have, which I'll move a little bit and use for 100% potatoes. I don't know how I can explain how marvelous home-grown potatoes taste compared to store-bought, but there is a distinct difference. I'll be giving away a lot of veggies with that big a garden, but that's fine by me!

Pictures

The peppers from the toughest survivor pepper plant ever are starting to get a tiny bit of color:

The wild morning glory blooms every morning.

Butterfly bush in bloom (with more morning glory wound around it.

bunnies, hostas, tomatoes

Welllll. The cute bunnies like green beans a lot. This used to be five bushes with flowers! Of course gardening is about learning your own locale, its pests and problems. Need to fence them better next year and spray them with pepper spray:

My front yard hostas are all in bloom--very pretty, and the pollinators like the flowers, so double win:

And finally, this is one day's harvest of tomatoes. Good thing I like tomatoes!

Tomatoes for breakfast

My favorite new thing to do is stand in the garden at 6 a.m. and eat tomatoes off the vine.

Everything is growing hard and fast in perfect weather for a garden. I've eaten bok choi, chard, squash, and tomatoes out of my own garden so far. I have carrots, kohlrabi, radishes, potatoes, and peppers still in a pre-harvest stage.

Here's the Google satellite view of my house. I think you get the sense of how it's abutting rural land. So quiet!

Nice break in the weather

We had over 10 days of 80 degree weather, and one afternoon I shivered with the windows open. It was in the 60's for a moment, as a storm came through.

I have tomatoes, though most are still green, I have all kinds of fall root crops coming up, I had green beans but now I have baby bunnies and that's not a great match. The potatoes (from grocery store potatoes I had ignored for too long) look great. Chard, peppers, yellow squash all edible, but I'll let the peppers ripen before I pick them.

I made pickled peppers from farmer's market banana peppers with a simple recipe. 1:1:1 apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, and sugar (they were sweet--you could put in less sugar), plus celery seeds and black peppercorns.  They were yummy! I'll lower the sugar content and pickle anything extra I get.