Another hot and muggy day here in the great Northeast. Aside from the cloying moisture in the air, wilting hairdos and enthusiasm alike, it's been dry. We've even had to water the garden a couple of times and the lawn has a few brown spots.

This is the time of year when the garden goes a bit nutso. The tomato plants, which we carefully nestle in trestles and cages during spring, have become destructive monsters...expanding and crushing everything in their path, including themselves. The good news is they are starting to ripen. Maybe it's something in the soil or our ever burgeoning mulch pile, but we always gets tons of tomatoes. Big beefy ones, cherry ones, grape ones, pear ones.

The basil is more of a slow study, usually one or two plants give up and die by now, the others nervously leafing out. Cukes are doing well but something went wrong with Faith's countertop pickles. This year we only planted two zuchini plants which seems to have kept them under control. Don't ask about the corn...I don't really like corn anyway. ":^) The corn tassles in the sunrise photo are from a field nearby (feed corn).

With all of this garden ripening it just has to be berry picking time. Zeke and I headed out at seven thirty hoping to beat the majority of the heat on the hour hike to our secret patch. The first good sign was seeing berry ladened scat along the way. Not sure what animal left it, maybe fox or small coyote? Either way there was quite a bit of it and it seemed like more on the way back.

The berry picking was primo with almost a gallon of blackberries. Zeke was bored, especially when he realized that I wasn't picking the berries for him. That and there were quite a few deer flies. Too bad I hadn't read this article before we left. Zeke and I might have been bug free, albeit sporting bright blue flowerpots on our heads.

We didn't really beat the heat. During the hike out and on the way way back Zeke stopped to lay down and cool off in a brook. He didn't even bother to shake the water off when he got out...most of the time he's shaking off while still standing in the water.

• info
  • 2 comments
  • permanent link
  • email this