Flower Power

Last year my sons planted a few sunflower seeds in the garden. A few of them grew, bloomed and set seed. This spring I had several volunteer sunflowers come up, and I let one of them grow in the midst of my potatoes. Seeing it now, big and beautiful and full of color, I am determined to grow more of them next year. I do love sunflower seeds on salads.


I broke off the lower leaves of my Brussels Sprouts. They look pretty darn funny. But it makes sense, that with more sunlight reaching down to the sprouts, they will grow bigger. These large, ungainly plants always remind me of England. I always saw these things growing in people's gardens over there.


My garden fence does double duty as a pumpkin trellis. Here is the inter-active portion of our blog -- how many pumpkins do you see in the picture above? And where is Waldo??

My jalapeno peppers are looking pretty good. I grew jalapenos because I need them for salsa, and I rarely get them in my CSA box and they cost 50 cents each at the farmers market. My smallest plant has three peppers. My largest have nine. Or rather, had nine. Because ...


I made salsa yesterday. Fourteen pints of mild salsa: tomatoes and green peppers and onions and jalapenos and cucumbers and cider vinegar and no cilantro (cilantro = blechy).

This past week I've frozen three gallons of creamy cauliflower soup and two gallons of creamy broccoli soup. I've canned twenty-four quarts of green beans, five pints of dilled beans, ten pints of dill cucumber relish, nine pints of dill cucumber slices, six pints of pickled beets and the salsa mentioned above. I've also made eight quarts of chicken stock and six quarts of beef stock. I'm pooped. Pleased, but pooped.