The Growing Season Wanes

Well, all of my hard work in the Spring paid off with another rewarding harvest. It's been a great year for Roma and cherry tomatoes and peppers of all kinds. I had no luck with corn and slicing cucumbers (again), but did finally win in the cuke category with pickling cukes. Oh - and I have 2 - count them 2! - pumpkins growing!! Woohoo! I shall have my own homegrown jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. Awesome!

Yesterday I got out into the garden for a bit. I cut down the sunflowers. My dreams of lots of roasted sunflower seeds were dashed a couple of weeks ago when I squirrel darted down my largest sunflower one afternoon when I let the dogs out. I inspected the sunflowers to find that all of the seeds were basically gone! Darn squirrel! After I reported my finding Dave tells me about a day earlier in the week when he saw the squirrel just lounging on the fence, monorail style, with legs draped over the side as if in a stupor. I guess he gorged himself on sunflowers and was taking a rest. Sigh...I did find that my smallest sunflower still has seeds because it has grown in such a way that the squirrel cannot reach them. Yippee! That one will stay in the ground a bit longer to let the seeds mature some more.

My second task yesterday was to harvest more tomatoes. The Romas are STILL going crazy. I must have harvested 10 pounds of tomatoes yesterday. I really need to learn how to make some home made spaghetti sauce. :)

I think in another week or so I'll take the pepper plants down. They are still producing but the peppers are starting to grow deformed, which always seems to happen at the end of the plant's life. I guess we all get deformed as we get older. ;) Once I get the pumpkins harvested I'll be able to clean those beds out and get some new compost in them for the Fall/Winter.

Can't believe it's the middle of September already! The first day of Fall will be in a few days. Crazy how quickly another growing season passes.