Purple basil is doing really well in its container. I put some of this in an arrabbiata sauce the other night and it was delicious! It's also pretty to look at, with its different shades of purple.
We've got lots of peppers coming in. Hopefully they will hang in there until it's time for salsa canning!
Another great success is the amount of dragon beans we're getting. Enough to have lubieh for dinner this week and more on the way!
Perhaps the most exciting thing that took off this year was the one single sweet corn plant. Check out those ears!
And here's where it turns meh. Our squash/melon area got huge and overgrown, but hasn't produced much, and it seems like some of it is succumbing to powdery mildew and some vine rot. But we've got one melon going, at least.
Finally, we have this insane forest of tomatoes.
It seems like every plant we have is just LOADED with tomatoes, but not a single one has ripened yet. So if they do decide to just have at it and turn red, we're going to be up to our eyeballs in all sorts of varieties. I've read that a lot of people are having trouble in our area getting their tomatoes to ripen. Perhaps it's the weather we've had this season. But either way, I'm hoping they start turning red soon. Otherwise we'll have to pick them all green and start layering them in boxes with newspaper like Mark's 78-year-old aunt has suggested we do.
Also going on in our backyard? This monstrosity.
The large tree you can see in the background next to the garage had some low hanging branches that were damaging our fence and blocking the pathway to the alley, so one day when I came home from a run, I walked into the backyard and saw this. Mark had cut them down, but as yet we haven't had time to cut it all down. So it sits. Scenic, right?
Even the chickens are all, "get this crap off our lawn."
At least when it comes to landscaping, there's one bright spot. In the spring, our front yard was looking good. We had lots of blooming flowers and it looked nice from the road. Then in June, it looked like this.
And I meant to get to it. I really did. And then we got to August and it was so bad it had extended onto the sidewalk and we looked like we had abandoned our home and let the weeds rule the premises. Our cat Maggie couldn't even see out the bay window to the street. Those prickly weeds even had giant fluffy heads - and they were taller me. No joke. I was starting to think our neighbors were just really patient souls for not reporting us to the borough.
Then on Sunday, I came home from grocery shopping to find Mark had worked a miracle and let himself get stabbed by jaggers for hours to give us this.
We will probably have to battle those horrid jagger weeds (that's my scientific name for them) again, but I vow this time to keep up with it before we become the condemned house on our block. Sheesh. And also it's my turn to deal with it next because he already served his time in the front landscaping trenches. (Thanks, Mark. Again.)
You're welcome on the weeding. I'm also sad to report that whatever murdered my squash/melon patch also killed that one melon you have pictured above. Next year, I'll need to hop to it on the neem oil. By the time I ordered it this year, it was too late.
ReplyDelete