Nothing on the scale of your garden, but we have towers and towers of beans. I love string beans, and they do well for me because they tolerate the shade we have.
I planted about 12 cherry tomato plants and they're all producing. Most doon't make it into the house. The rest get cut up and eaten with pasta.
Onions are about ready for pickling (English style, with malt vinegar). The zucchini was entirely unproductive (I'm ashamed to admit it).

There's a half dozen long eggplant ready to pick in about a week, and a huge crop of edamame - Japanese soybeans - that I love to snack on.

The mint is thriving this year, so I think it's time to make some couscous with lots of mint. Lettuce-leaf basil was a big success: huge leaves and really good flavour.

Suzy, I so admire your industry!

It was 104 F. this afternoon. It was 101° yesterday and the day before. The highs for this week are all triple digit. It's not looking good. The grass is turning brown and the trees are loosing leaves. One can tell the more affluent farmers in the valley. The ones who can afford to water have green crops. The ones who can't have brown, dried crops. My plants don't much matter, considering.

This is just one of those years.

How to answer. Picked the last of the bi-color corn late this afternoon. Think Leone said 67 ears. We had 7 ears for dinner and I helped her freeze the rest. Still at least 2 weeks until the Stowell's Evergreen corn is ready.

Sick of looking at cukes, made all the pickles we can use and are giving the new ones coming on to anyone that will take them. The Armenian cucumber is finally giving us all the fresh ones we want.

Tomatoes, rather not talk about them. really don't need to can any more but we did put up 18 pints of stewed tomatoes yesterday afternoon. The Brandywines are really good fresh but don't produce very well and seem to be less resistant to disease than the hybrids. Tried Beefy Boy seeds from Parks this spring and they are very good. Some are coming in at 16 and 17 ounces and make great slicers. Again, more than we can use.

Every year I try to grow rutabaga and almost every year it gets too hot and they get woody. We put a couple of lambs in the freezer last week and think we have to have rutabaga for scotch broth this winter, well, fortunately we can usually buy them at the store.

The fennel has been harvested and 4 nice ones are in the crisper of the refrigerator. dearly love fennel sliced fresh in salads and even braised.

The chinese cabbbages are growing like mad, responding to the shortening days. They are such good keepers and we will enjoy them for several months.

The root cellar has had it's annual cleaning and the spiders evicted from the place. It will be ready for the turnips and carrots later.

Pole beans aren't ready yet, planted them so late, but, they are beginning to bloom.

Grapes, if we get half of the grapes that set on this year and they ripen correctly we will be awash in grapes. The Concords are literally bursting with fruit and the delicious little Cacoas and just as good. The Canadice are bearing just as heavy and we may well try to dry some of them for raisins.

The Daikon radishes are growing like gangbusters and we should have enough for storage and eating fresh. Will plant a fall crop of regular radishes in a couple of weeks.

There is about 60 lbs. of onions in a storage shed, later they will go in the root cellar. The garlic has been harvested and cured and I will pick out the best cloves for planting about Oct. 1.

Yet, no matter how much we grown and harvest I never get tired of the job of growing it. We will certainly give many lbs. of onions to family and friends and there should be lots of other produce to share.

My very small scale garden is producing in spite of the #$@%jap beetle invasion. Planted a few pole beans this year. Letting what's left dry on the vine for shelly beans. Planted one cuke, enough for us to eat, ds eats them out of hand. Tomatos just coming on. And last wekk dh come home from a buddy's with elderberries to clean, we have enough for him to make 2 batches of wine. And, again in spite of the jb's I got enough red rasberries to make a pie, MMMM.

Late summer means so many things. Other than the harvesting of beans, all the varieties of tomatoes,peppers,celery,eating,freezing and resowing,the herb garden is now at it's peak and it's time for pesto, lemon verbena lemonade and cookies,and the constant picking of all the basils,rosemarys,thymes,sages,and even some of the lavenders and either drying or freezing them. The fennel,lovage,salad burnet,oreganos and coriander are all over the place and need to be cut back. This is a large part of the summer but summer to me isn't all about food and eating. It's time now to start gathering the seeds from the annuals and perennials I want to grow next year,especially those which you can't find at any of the nurseries around here. They need to be picked through,sorted and put into envelopes and labeled.Late summer means all those #+%*# bird babies are gone gone gone so I can now knock down nests and clean up where they've been...like our garage. This is when I haul things out and start painting. I'm too busy in the spring and fall with the gardens,and for a few weeks have some breathing room now to redo some of the chairs and other things I've gathered here and there which need a fresh coat of something wonderful and cheery. Finally,late summer is when our whole family makes its annual trek to North Carolina for a week on the ocean. I can see,looming in the distance,the whole back to school,football games,fall clothes in the stores,thing going on and I just want to push it all back for another month or so.As much as I love autumn,I'm never ready for it when it comes.

My area is like Michael's, not so much in the triple-digits-but week after week after week in the upper 90's. IMO, a nighttime low of 85 isn't low enough. No one's lawn is green, even the affluent have ceded the battle; it's August and that's usual. The grass will return after a tropical storm. So far this year, we've mowed twice.

I'm the one who swears by lasagna-style and heavy mulch for the gardens. And it's true that the only flower bed still in bloom is a lasagna-style, watered with the laundry's rinse water. The veg garden's mulch just wasn't enough to keep the little moisture we've gotten this year; we've still not reached 3" precipitation since the beginning of April. Accummulated a tenth-inch at a time. Surrounding neighborhoods are shrieking drought! drought! because they've only gotten 12" in the past couple months. I water the half-sized plants and mutter, come visit me and I'll show you drought.

The Fortex beans are doing their best, actually producing enough to freeze. The vining purple-pods (Beauleiux?) are a failure, producing fibrous, stringy pods of little taste. The onions were harvested early because the neighbor's dogs played tromp'em down. The English peas are long-gone, as are all the root crops. The squash and cukes are still producing; the 'lopes are starting to ripen. The 'lopes were self-sown and rescued from the compost pile when three-leaf babies. Not too viny, but I wish I had grown them on a trellis; I suspect the slugs of having horrid plans for fruit. The limas are making their usual fat pods, although in quarter-quantity. Teensy-tiny bees are doing the pollinating. The afternoon sun makes them look like flecks of gold hovering over the white blossoms. The tomatoes have stopped setting - too hot for too long, but they will give another crop after the temperature drops under 85° for a few days. This is the good side to living in a long-season area, everything gets a second chance after the summer heat eases.

It's time to plant the cool-weather crops of broccoli, kale, cabbage, collards, mache; but the soil is either powder-dry or adobe. I dither about starting seed in trays, not wanting to transplant into pots, but knowing the baby plants can't go into dry soil... will it or won't it still be this dry next week...

DH looks askance at me, but I watch the weather-maps for a nice little hurricane to form in the Carribbean - not for the winds (I wish those on no one), but for the rain it may bring.

oh PLEASE don't wish for that until after we get back. Those things always hit cape Hattaras. I think one is forming now..Hurricane Dean.

Much like Michael here (today we're set to break the record from 1954. Anything over 101). I've been trying not to water as it is drought mode only one county away. I'll leave a huge pitcher at one end of the shower while I get ready and pour half on one plant, half on another each day. The lack of water and abundance of heat is showing up quick in the wilting, withering plants, and in the crunchy brown grass, covered with crunchy brown leaves newly fallen (not in a good way). The good ones are: my climbing petunias are happily climbing the lattice, 'Fireworks' solidago is about to explode its yellow profuseness, and the sedums are looking happy. No herbs this year other than the perennial ones which are standing their ground right now.

NOAA is still calling it Tropical Depression Four. How long will you be in CH? *IF* it holds together, I doubt it will get to CH before late next week.

Auguat? Pfffffft! It's been over 100 degrees for almost a week now & headed for around 104 today. All I can say is that there's only 48 more days until October!

After reading what Suzy has going on I had to take a nap...but I loved reading about it. You could educate youngsters about where most food comes from and how it is preserved all by yourself. Much better than a field trip to the local candymaker or softdrink bottler. I wish some public tv station would focus not just on the larger farmers but what a family can do...would make an interesting program. But they should show it all, bugs and critters and sweat...Suzy makes it sound easy. josh

Josh ~ I think Suzie is unique, although there's no doubt in my mind that any child would be the better for knowing her. If for nothing more than as an example of being cheerful in spite of the bugs and sweat.

It's amazing that kids, even in a small city like Tyler, where getting out into "the country" is merely a 15 minute drive, know so little about where food comes from. One of the projects that our Extension Agent does every year is to put on what he calls Agucation at the East Texas State Fair. The Master Gardeners, Master Naturalists & FFA kids man the exhibit taking groups of kids through it showing teaching them about raising vegetables and the basics of ranching. It's a revelation, both to the kids & to the people who are acting as docents (for lack of a better word).

You'd think that the schools around here would do field trips to some of the local farms. We have hundreds of them around here, mostly small family-run truck farms & a lot of organic operations. But I guess they're too busy "teaching to the test." I am constantly amazed what schools DON'T teadfch these days.

Many years ago, I had to take a foster child to a specialist in a nearby county, and I took her mother as well, for morale because I thought it would be best for both of them to be together for a procedure. As you do in my area, you passed through the countryside to get there and this lady saw a cow in the flesh for the very first time. I was dumbfounded. She lives in a county with just 80 thousand residents. We are a rural community. Never saw a cow?

What I think is happening is that since factories took over so much of the farming, most people don't think any more about how food is produced than how a television is produced. Many of them don't even know how it's prepared anymore, letting somebody else do that as well. We are a society of letting somebody else be responsible for almost everything we need and accepting it with no questions.

Shelter, food, clothing are simple things and learning how to maintain them, make them, use them wisely isn't rocket surgery (LOL, what one of my professors used to say). They should be basic life skills and most people should know at least "something" about them.

I don't talk about my gardening or life to be self righteous, I just talk about it because it is so much a part of who we are. I talk about it to encourage other people to try their hands at a home garden, or making their life simpler, because I really believe that we make our lives entirely too complicated and impersonal. I am busy, yes, but it's a good busy and an enjoyable busy, at at one time of my life a very necessary busy.

I feel good that most everything we put in our mouths is pure, fresh, and I know what it contains. The added benefit is that a little work during the summer provides us with nearly 100 percent of all the fruits and vegetables we consume in a year. It's convenient, it's healthy, and it just tastes better. During WWII victory gardens provided American people with 40% of their food supply. That's an impressive amount. I really shudder when I think of communities banning things like hanging out laundry, composting, having a few chickens or putting in food gardens. These are not ugly things.

Suzy, your writing about your life and work is so enjoyable...that's what made me think of a video or tv show. You combine good down to earth (no pun intended) common sense with lyrical celebration of the results of your work and its benefits to your family. I just thoight some parents, and school librarians, might buy a video for those kids whose parents don't/won't//can't take them to the state fair exhibits like Andie mentioned. There may be such a video available...I just know I'd buy one in a heartbeat for myself and my 4 year old granddaughter. josh

Oh, I took what you said as a very profound compliment, Jo. You are always gracious in your contributions to the Garden Party and a joy to have in our midst. My grandkids, both sets of them are all farm or ranch kids. I remember when those kids, when integrated into schools with city kids were teased as being yokels. But, they are so full of information they'll find helpful in their adult life. My g'son knew where every cut of meat came off a cow or pig by the time he was four. Most adults don't know that. LOL. My g'son who is fourteen has bought his first tractor at auction. A real full sized one. And he has taken it apart, repaired it, repainted it and it's now worth at least 3,500 dollars when he sells it. Some fourteen years old boys are either stuck in front of a television, or their parents are busy enrolling them in activities to keep them out of drugs and off the streets. Life is just full of things to learn and do. Constructive and not costing a lot of money.

Suzy, those words from you mean a lot to me. Thanks.

Your grandsons sound like go-getters. You should tell the tractor fiend about the Tractor Forum here...I'd bet he'd love it. I know how pleased I was finding another Cycad lover on GW when I first joined.

And I remember as a new cook having to look up in James Beard's cookbook where the parts of the cow and pig were...he had a good diagram and explanation...about the only thing I knew were the rump and the ribs...LOL josh

Found this on youtube.

Perseids.

endorphan reminded me,how many kids have seen a true night sky,seen the milkyway,big dipper,meteors falling or as John Denver said "seen it raining fire from the sky" fireflys,heard a whiporwill,cicadas. There are so many natural wonders outside in the world these poor children have never known.