Growing

I had to include this picture. I told Rob that I had gone around and cut down weeds for a fall decoration in front of Litengard.

"Weeds?"

Yes, and I think they look magnificient!



This is my harvest from yesterday! And there are hundreds of more tomatoes to ripen and be picked! My friend, Danica, put me onto roasting the tomatoes and I've done that a couple of times. Cut whatever type of tomatoes into sections, good olive oil, salt and pepper (I always use kosher) and lots of cut up garlic. Then roast them for an hour or so at a low temp until they are shriveled. I even like them a bit blackened. Just a bit. They are so yummy! Sweet but somewhat tangy. I love them cold, right from the frig. Kay told me her mom would just freeze the tomatoes whole. After frozen, put in a bag and save for stews or soup in the winter. That I am definately going to try.

I really had fun with my garden this year. It must have been a perfect year for everything. The beans never stopped producing, the brocolli was abundant, even the carrots, which I usually don't have much success with prospered. I even have jalepenos and red, green and black peppers!

Every night we have loads of veggies for dinner, straight from the garden. We're spoiled and going to miss the fresh produce in about another month. I do have loads of brussel sprouts, red cabbage (have an interesting soup with red cabbage and sausage I'm going to try), and eggplant that I think will last at least another month. We really could be self sufficient as far as food this summer, except we like meat and fish. Oh well, maybe they'll be chickens next year at 44.





This is another layer to my sustainability kick. I had planted two apples trees in the backyard garden before the wedding. And this year I had loads of apples. The only trick was to get to the apples before the squirrels! They made me mad. They would take an apple and eat just about 1/3 of it and then leave it lying on the ground. I wouldn't mind sharing if they would just finish the apple and not be wasteful. My mother taught me better than that! But I did end up with a couple dozen very nice apples.