Summer Surprises: Snakes and Shakes!

Surprise!

Pa can still dive, he's seventy five! Go Pa!

What's that in the tree?

Surprise! It's Shady the Scare Snake protecting our figs from birds (it worked, at least for a while!).

Surprise! Our CSA farm was open for picking on Labor Day! Oh yes!

Those beans were delish! Aren't the purple ones pretty?

Hey, ever think those blog giveaways are rigged? I used to, until...

 Surprise! I won TWO giveaways this summer!  Nava's new book AND Dreena's new book, YES.

It was too hot to cook anything from the books, so...

 Spinach Mango Blend, inspired by Nava.  

 Strawberry Hemp Blend, inspired by Dreena! 

I learned that hemp seeds are great in blended drinks, they aren't "seedy" at all.

I'll get to some cookin' from those awesome books in the fall! Thanks, ladies for the wonderful giveaways!!

 CSA Week #13 (8/22/12): Three lovely eggplants, including a beautiful ghost eggplant! hmmm...

Surprise!

I love eggplant (I never really LOVED it before the CSA eggplant, it was AMAZING).  And, surprise! I didn't have to skin it, salt it or drain it, it was so sweet and yummy just sauteed right up in lemon, garlic, olive oil and salt.  SO GOOD.

Surprise!

 You thought I forgot to post these, right? Nope, here they are.  

CSA Week #14 (8/29/12): Lots of tomatoes!  

 CSA Week #15 (9/5/12):  Lots of greens, including kale (my favorite!), and all the tomatoes pictured below!

Lots of beautiful tomatoes two weeks in a row meant only one thing.  We had to learn to can!

 Surprise! My first canned tomatoes.  

And homemade raspberry jam (from local, organic raspberries!)

 Summer's almost over!!  Learn to put em' up, folks!  Don't forget to dry those herbs and freeze that pesto!  There's LOTS more awesome produce to be had for these last few days of summer and first crisp days of autumn.

Have you all had any surprises this summer?

Garden Fazool, June 2012

As of June 30th, 2012...

 Zucchini Flowers on my Striata Zucchini (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds)

 Open.

Here they are in the Zucchini Garden that I put in this year (on May 8th.)

As of June 19th.

And, ten days later (June 29th), look how much they grew in ten days!

Quite a nice tomato going on the left, there, too.  That one was a gift from my realtor!

Thanks, Bob!

My Rainbow Chard (from seed), in the garden below:

Look at those artichokes! I'm not sure if they will flower or not, but they are cool looking.  And, my Scarlet Runners have taken off up the fence.  Here's the garden in April, it's hard to believe what happens in three months.

Scarlet Runner Flowering.

 Beans on the far side fence + another little tomato behind!

Tomatoes going very well along the side beds! 

And, all the flowers...

 Bee Balm

Not sure? It grew up in the front.  Kinda looks like a purple fox glove type flower.

The front!  Fig tree is on the far right behind that bloomed sunflower head.

Sunflowers

Waiting. 

Dark Horse.

Hydrangea.

I adore the sprightly blue flowers.

Lavender Flowers, With Bees.  

And, my fig tree, loaded with tender figs!

This is why I welcome the heat of summer.

What are you all hoping to harvest?

Slay the Monster

So, did it get ripe? Why, yes, yes it did. Fig on the bottom is (obviously) the MONSTER fig.

And here she is, plucked from her tree:

Goodness. 

Sliced up, it seriously looks like TWO figs. 

For comparison, here is a more normally sized fig that I picked the next day:

You can see, the volume looks like about half of the monster fig!

The rest of the figs seem to be getting going now, I picked three today, two yesterday and three the day before that.  And I can see they are veining out in purple, so it's looking good! I'd better get my fig pants on now so I am ready when all the smaller ones come ripe at the same time (right now it is the larger ones getting ripe, and they are maybe about five percent of the fruit on the tree). 

Wish me luck, and post favorite fig recipes if you like! This batch of figs seems to taste a lot like watermelon, which is awesome.

<3 Dawn