Woman down!

I'm not completely down, but I am battling a sinus infection that's whooping my rear, so I'm not getting as much done as I'd like to.  I think if my face would just explode I'd feel much better.  lol.

Here is what I got from the garden this morning.

The color is off, that's a honeydew melon.  Then there are two bell peppers, a jalapeno and a few tomatoes.

Today's garden harvest

The garden is dwindling down for the year.  This is what I got today.  

Our only lonely cantaloupe

For some reason we only had one cantaloupe that grew out of three vines.  It was fun to watch, but man, did it grow slowly.  We thought it was neat how the veining doesn't show up right away when it's growing.

Well, one morning it finally happened:  I went out to hang up clothes and check the garden and it was off the vine.

Want to see our tiny only lonely cantaloupe?  Here it is when it was still growing.

Here it is with me holding it in one hand.  Huge, huh?  lol

Let me tell you, it was very small, but it was also V-E-R-Y   G-O-O-D

We have four honey dew melons growing out there.  One will be ready soon, I think.  Not sure what the others will do, they are still small.  Will have to wait and see.

Fruit trees and grapes

This home came with some old, neglected fruit trees in the back yard.  There are two apple trees, one peach tree, one nectarine tree and a grapevine.  The owner of the home hasn't lived here in over 10 years and she's pretty sure no one has done anything with any of them during that time, which makes me sad.  I fertilized everything right after we moved in and we've been watering hoping to coax them back to production.

I can report now that we didn't get any nectarines.  The few that were on it got ripe and fell off or were eaten by the squirrels while I was out of state earlier this summer and husband didn't get them and save them for me.  Bad husband!  lol.  It doesn't look like we are going to get any apples, either.  The one apple tree that the owner though may still produce doesn't have any on it at all, although it did bloom, so I'm not sure what's up with that.  The other apple tree, the older one, did have a few apples on one side of it but they've slowly fallen off and now I only see maybe three or four out there.  I'm guessing that even with me watering, the horrible heat this year just did them in.


The peach tree has produced some peaches. Yay!  I picked what was ripe yesterday and have them peel and cut up in the refrigerator.  Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet.  I've got maybe 2-3 cups, so maybe a tart or something?

My most pleasant surprise, though, came from the grape vine.  I've been watering it and watching the grapes shrivel on the vine and fall off, or get some odd bruise looking rot on the bottoms and fall off so I thought I was wasting my time (and my precious collected rain/cooking/bath water) on them.  I tried one of the remaining grapes about 5 days ago and they were still pretty hard and TART.  So imagine my surprise last night when I'm checking everything and I found this:

The few that made it to decent size are FINALLY starting to turn purple.  I swiped one and they are GOOD.  Nice and sweet.  The skins are really thick and tough, so they'll have to be juiced, but that's just fine with me.  There aren't too many out there, but maybe I can make a jar or two of jelly.  Or maybe something else, will have to read up and see what all I can do with them.

Funny food

Today's garden oddity.


One side

The other side

Clean thoughts, people, clean thoughts!  lol

Garden update 8/9/11

I'm still getting quite a few tomatoes daily.  I have five eggplants out there growing.  They aren't growing very fast, so not sure how that's going to turn out.  I think I already told you that I've pulled all the beans, peas and green beans.  I'm still getting a few cucumbers, probably 2-3 per day, which is a HUGE reduction from what it was before.  Jalapenos are doing fine, they like the heat and dryness.  Zucchinis are coming to an end soon, I think.  I get a couple every few days, but the plants are looking pretty ragged and the stupid squash bugs have arrived, so I may just go ahead and pull them soon.  I have a few melons growing out there but it's August already, so not sure how big they'll get during the rest of the growing season here.

I made more spaghetti sauce the other day because I had probably 10-15 pounds of tomatoes to use up.

Yesterday's garden gathering

Yesterday I meant to post pictures of the tomatoes and jalapenos that we gathered but I forgot. So, here you go.