The View From Here #4

We are officially eating from the garden! We've been enjoying fresh lettuce, radish (at least the Dude has - I think they are tres yuck), Swiss chard, beet tops, green onions, potatoes, beans, and cucumber.

Here is my first pickin' of beans and cucumber ....

Yes the beans are purple. They magically turn green as they cook, neat eh?

My supper the other night looked something like this ... almost all compliments of the garden. A big green salad featuring lettuce, cucumber, onion, and radish from the garden (only the carrots and tomatoes were not), a baked potato (shh ignore the sour cream) from the garden and beans from the garden.

Within the next week or so I predict that I will have a few peppers, more cucumbers, hopefully a picking of Okra, and lots of zucchini. Then I will be sorry.

I started to think about how/when I'm going to get to do all the preserving and canning that I want to do. I think I have finally resigned myself to the fact that I likely won't be able to get as much done this year. As much as I am going to try, I realized that much of the canning - salsa and tomatoes in particular, was done at the very end of August and into September of last year. I'll keep my fingers crossed that I can still get some done, but I am just going to try to relax and tell myself it's okay to just get done whatever I can. If all else fails, I will just stick the tomatoes and peppers into the freezer as is and make them into salsa later in the year, and make the tomatoes into diced tomatoes as I need them. And as for the other things, like BBQ onion sauce, jam, red pepper relish, and so on - I figure they are just extra things that are nice to have during the year but we will likely survive the winter without them if I don't get a chance to make as much this year.

If you live close by me, don't be surprised if I start unloading my veggies on you later in the summer when I am too hot and too pregnant to do anything with them!

Here are a few pictures of what we've got growing now ....

There are many many more beans on their way...

Onions are large and in charge. The red onions should be ready soon.

Some hills of potatoes are ready to be dug. We dug one on the weekend and got nearly 20 potatoes. We are going to have tons! But I cannot even begin to describe how delicious they are. The FD says, "Just wait until you try the red ones"

Peppers

Tomatoes are beginning to flourish!

There are lots of cucumbers growing on the plants. I know it sounds weird because cucumbers don't taste like a whole lot ... but the difference in taste between a store bought cuc and a garden fresh cuc is astronomical. I wanted to eat the entire thing all at once. So delicious!

Acorn and butternut squash

Okra! One of the things I look forward to most.

The zucchini plants are also about to go wild

God is good, all the time, all the time, God is good.