Garden Update

I took all of these pictures yesterday and had every intention of doing a post last night, but a vet appointment for Penny, phone calls and "The Greatest American Dog" all conspired together against my best Blogger intentions for a timely post, so without further delay, here are some pictures and an update on my gardening efforts.

Even though it's been pretty dry lately and my watering efforts are irregular at best, the garden is thriving. We've eaten a couple cucumbers already this week. Here's another one that's almost reached the ideal size for supper. These are Japanese Climbing Cucumbers. They seem to be doing much better now after a couple good doses of Liquid Fence. Did you know deer LOVE cucumbers? And because they're climbing up a trellis, they're at an ideal height for a deer to nom, nom, nom!

This is Bright Lights Swiss Chard. I picked some the other night and cut it up for Swiss Chard Patties. I also have another recipe I want to try for Braised Swiss Chard. (Both recipes are from cooks.com).

Here's a real surprise--garbage can potatoes! Don't they look fabulous? And they tasted fabulous too! I tend to forget about them in their own little spot in the yard, but decided it was time to dig down into the dirt and see if there was anything resembling potatoes hiding in there. I was so surprised that there were potatoes and they were really nice ones too. I didn't even have to peel them, just scrubbed them clean with water and the vegetable brush, cut them up and boiled them for supper. This has been my most successful garden experiment so far this summer and I'll definitely try it again next year--maybe even add another garbage can to my collection for more potatoes.

Here's the yellow zucchini. I've already picked several of these--made a chocolate zucchini cake and zucchini fritters one night for supper. The really nice thing about these yellow zucchini is that you can SEE them and pick them before they turn into the size of a baseball bat. Those green zucchini sometimes can hide under a leaf and grow really fast if you miss them for a few days.

My squash is growing like crazy now too. This is Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash. Isn't it cute? This is a white acorn-type squash. I've never grown squash like this before and it looks like I'm going to have plenty to share from just 2 plants.

The tomatoes are still slow. I've picked 6 red grape tomatoes so far, and there are a couple more hiding in here and just turning ripe. These are a little bit bigger than grape tomatoes you buy in the store--they're almost 2 inches long, but very tasty right out of the garden.

The regular tomatoes are growing, but still no signs of ripening at all. All of the tomatoes took a bit of a beating from high winds in a thunderstorm early last week. Even though I have them in the heavy-duty cages, a couple of them were almost completely toppled over when I got home from work. I set them to rights and tamped the dirt back down around the roots, but the bottom branches came out of the cages and I had to remove several that were laying on the ground.


We had a little rain shower yesterday evening around suppertime. It was a nice surprise because we haven't had much rain for several weeks.

It rained pretty hard for about 15 minutes. This chipmunk found a good spot to stay out of the rain and continue stuffing his fat little cheeks.

And you know what happens when the sun shines while it's raining........

Can you see the second rainbow?

I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to post again tomorrow, but if I don't, I hope you all have a splendid weekend and get a chance to enjoy nature in your backyard and beyond.