These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I'm not the only one who loves this fabulously warm weather we've been having. The garden is lovin' it, too! (Oh, and the weeds, the weeds, have been lovin' it, too) After a very slow start this spring, everything is finally looking awesome! (Even the weeds)

The beans are climbing voraciously (I'm hoping to see blossoms before too long).

The corn, while still shorter than it should be, has grown exponentially during the past two weeks, and a couple of the tallest plants are beginning to tassel.

I had to thin the carrots (sad!) but at least we got to enjoy a handful of very tender baby carrots (happy!). We've been enjoying lettuce for several weeks.

The greenhouse-bought tomato plants are fruiting... and so are some of the plants I started at home! The dozen I started from seed were so small and scrawny when it was time to move them to the garden that I went ahead and bought four more plants from the local greenhouse, just to make sure we get some toms even if we do get an early frost. I'm now optimistic about getting fruit from many of the 16 tomato plants! I'm hoping to can a lot of sauce :)

Let's see, the pumpkins have spilled from their bed, over the retaining wall and are trying to creep across the alley. The gourds aren't quite there yet, but are filling in nicely.

The potatoes, which are planted in a "box" this year (more about this experiment in another post) are lush and blooming. (Those tall things in the background are volunteer hollyhocks from where I dumped last year's stalks. I love volunteers!)

The one volunteer sunflower I let stay is huge and happy. Not as tall as usual (yet), but massive in girth. I'm excited to see the blossom!

And the strawberries, after an onslaught of tiny berries in late June/early July, are pulling out of their July lull and beginning their all-the-way-until-really-hard-frost run of much more decently sized berries.

For the first time since we planted these babies we've gotten more than 12 berries! The bushes are loaded and we're eagerly awaiting full ripening!

Garden space was at a premium this year, and yet this enormous wild thing has found its way into my heart and comes back year after year in the vegetable garden where it takes a rather large bite out of the row real estate. Oh well. Hollyhocks make me happy.

All this makes me very, very happy. If I could break out in song in a blog post, I would.