Thirft Store Find

Sweetest little homemade dress for Talia. It's pretty short but that makes it even cuter. She loves it.

Eggplants, Green Beans and Many Many Tomatoes

I can see that some of the garden is winding down now. The yellow squash keeps putting out new blossoms but they die on the vine. Those plants used to take up my whole garden but now I can see they need to be pulled out. I think they got a disease-- or maybe there wasn't enough room for them. I had no idea they would get so big. The eggplants are coming in and I have to hurry and cook them up tomorrow-- Eggplant and Goat Cheese Salad again and some fresh bread. The tomatoes are still coming in heavy. I've made lots of salads, tons of gazpacho and some salsa too. I'm also giving many tomatoes away. There are only a handful of green beans so I'm just eating them raw as I pick them. I think it's funny that I didn't even know the green beans were growing. I'm so clueless about gardening that I had no idea where on the vine I would find them. The japanese beetles have decimated the leaves despite putting out traps so I just figured I wouldn't get any beans. Suddenly I saw the first bean and realized that there were a bunch of them just hanging there! Then again, those beans like to hide, don't they? This garden has been fun, educational and tasty to say the least. I need to take some time and gather my thoughts so I'll know what I want to change for next year.

Don't turn your back for a second

I skipped a day of harvesting tomatoes and ended up with about 8 biggies and almost two pints of cherry toms. Since then I'm getting about 5 biggies per day plus a pint of cherries. Now listen-- I love tomatoes. I planted the cherry tomatoes just to eat while I was outside gardening. I had NO IDEA, however, that I would reap this many. I had actually planted MORE tomato plants and the guy at the Bruce Company convinced me that two plants of each was more than enough (thank you, Bruce Company guy!). When I bought the tomato cages I never in a million years thought they would grow that big and now the plants are taller than me!

On a side note, some of my tomatoes have these scarred bottoms. They seem fine-- I mostly just cut that part off. Can anyone tell me if that's normal tomato stuff or if they have some disease?

I'm giving tomatoes away to friends (and yellow squash is coming your way too pretty soon) and I ordered a canning cookbook from the library so hopefully I'll be able to deal with some of this bounty. I'm eating a lot of tomatoes these days.

Also, will it be ok to plant the tomatoes in the same location next year or am I supposed to move them? They have to be where they are now or they'll shade everything else...

Redhead

Talia got to "dye" her hair as a reward for good behavior (hey, it's better than getting her a Barbie or giving her ice cream...). It was really fun and made her feel special all day. It washes right out and doesn't seem to get all over the house or her clothes (not much anyway). I think I might get some other colors.

Family

Pics of the cousins on our vacation...