September Garden

I know. It's not even September anymore.

After lamenting that things grew so very slowly this cold year, my garden did finally grant me some yummy fruits and veggies. And, as usual, I couldn't help but photograph them. Why not, right?

Our little apple tree did well in its inaugural year of fruit bearing and produced four different kinds of small, but delicious apples.And after the pear tree was raided by squirrels last year, it had a pretty good crop this year, thanks to some bird netting. The pears are always fantastic. The tree now as some sort of blister mite infection that I can't seem to et rid of, so the pears turned out bumpy and mutant-looking, but they tasted great anyway.And although my tomatoes clearly don't thrive in whatever kind of soil we've got (I'm thinking it's probably infected with something that tomatoes can't handle and I need to stop planting for several years or find some seriously disease-resistant plants) we still got at least a few tomatoes off each of the plants.There were a few dinners worth of beans and three or four cucumbers as well.

And here it is October. There are just a few apples left out there and summer is already feeling like a distant memory. Guess I'll look forward to some lemons and grapefruit!

Summer Veggies

It's been such a sad, sad summer in my garden. It's been so cool that these were the first two tomatoes to ripen and there've been only about five more. None of the bigger tomatoes are red yet...although one of them is a yellow/green tomato anyway. The basil's all ready to go, but no tomatoes to eat it with! The string beans have been fun though. Mam helped me plant a variety of colors, so we've got purple, yellow and green beans. They're good too...although the purple beans actually turn green when you cook them. You can see a couple of funny little squashes. I thought I was buying yellow crook-necked squash, but clearly I blew it. These are little, green spaceship-shaped squashes instead.

Fortunately, I got the netting over the pear tree in time to save our crop from squirrels this year. There are tons of ripening pears out there. And our apple tree will have a crop for the first time this year too...of three different apple varieties. I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out...although I may have let our little tree become a tad overambitious this year!

Summer's Last Gasp

It's been weeks since I've posted and summer was officially over two days ago. The blog posts are piling up in my head, but that's not a very reliable place to keep them, especially these days.

It was another summer with a bountiful harvest, especially of tomatoes. Early in the season, I lamented that they looked like they had blossom end rot. Some of them did, but even those were salvageable.I love to take pictures of my vegetables just because it somehow makes life seem so colorful and serene...even when it's kind of bland and decidedly not serene at all.

To finish up our summer, we headed out to the ballpark one more time on Labor Day. We got to see the Giants' new pitcher, Brad Penny. We got to see him pretty up close and personal, actually since our seats were about 20 rows up from the bullpen.He's one intimidating-looking dude. The kids came prepared. Although Mam refused to wear her new Giants hat, both of them had insisted on painting their own signs for the event. Not necessarily pretty, but they did the job and how could they be that unattractive with such ethusiastic fans under them?It was a good game. I hadn't wanted to bring Mam because she was predictably pretty annoying. But she was pretty cute for an hour or so. By the end, she only wanted to go home. And home was brought to us by this guy, the Giants' closer, Brian Wilson.We're not always so generous in our praise of Mr. Wilson in our household, but he did a fine job on Labor Day and made the whole trip worthwhile. Thanks, Brian!

I would have loved to take Smunch to see the Giants play the Cubs (one of his other favorite teams) this weekend, but with so many other potential activities and invites, it just wasn't in the cards for us. Maybe next year...

Pear season

Despite the plethora of different fruit trees in our yard, one thing we don't have is an apple tree. So, as Fall approaches, we look to the weird, straggly little tree on the side of our house. About now, it's heavy and drooping with the most lovely pears you've ever seen. They're a variety of Bartlett, but they have this pretty pink blush to them. Even if you don't like pears, you've got to admit, this is a beautiful specimen!