Pardon me as I share some garden photos with you. I’m not trying to be all “look at what I grew” but at the same time I want people to realize that the garden is an ever evolving environment and that even a first time gardener like myself can have success. Plus, I just found some cool new filters in iPhoto that I’m playing around with - sorry about the kitschy look…

This is the only other red tomato out there, and it’s actually still more orange than red. Hopefully there will be more soon.

But I’m not too optimistic since most of them look like this, and it’s been rainy and cool most of the last week. Just when I decided to stop watering them so they would ripen, mother nature stepped in to foil my plans.

Some of them are still looking like this, but I don’t expect they’ll have time to ripen unless we get the Indian summer of all time.

This guy was enjoying the sun yesterday, glad I saw him before he ended up in my hair.

Here is our tomato jungle from a distance - for perspective the cucumber trellis is 6 feet tall. This is what happens when you squeeze six more plants than you planned into the same space, and then change jobs and go on vacation just as it gets really warm. No time for pruning means bushes that are literally 7 feet tall. The tops of the east facing side of the row have all fallen over and are going to get pruned tomorrow night to encourage the lower tomatoes to ripen. In front of them are the leeks that are looking really good!

Moving on, here’s one of the chocolate bell peppers. Hopefully they have time to turn color yet this year.

And the tomatillos - turns out this variety is self fertile as this was the only plant to make it and it is busy setting fruit.

The last few shelling peas that were hiding are now in full view. I should have pulled them and their trellis a couple of weeks ago but I haven’t had time. Now there are invaders so I’m not sure what to do (see below).

The spaghetti squash planted under the pole beans has decided that the pea trellis makes a nice place to hang out. In order to pull the trellis now I have to figure out how to move the squash vines as well.

I want to be careful of that since there are a lot of these tiny guys plus a bunch that are full size and just starting to change color. I’ve counted upwards of 15 larger ones on two vines but it’s hard to get an accurate tally.

Just as the bush beans are finishing the pole beans are coming on. Unfortunately no one told them that they were only supposed to get 5 feet tall, they’ve topped out their tee-pees and are now reaching for the sky.

The corn is just starting to tassel - if we get a few more warm days we’ll be enjoying it with butter.

When I took my gardening class I won a packet of Cinderella pumpkin seeds - what was supposed to be a 6 foot vine has spread about 20 feet and is smothering the ends of the potato vines - luckily we should be able to dig them without disturbing the pumpkins too much. In the upper right corner you can just make out the Brussels sprouts and the left corner shows the slowly dying potato vines. The taters have been amazing and now we’re just waiting for them to finish dying back so that we can dig them up. Hopefully sometime towards the end of September.