Reap the harvest...Leviticus 19:9

Just a few pictures of our gardening and preserving update for the year...

I originally planted 3 rows of green beans. They didn't come up (old seeds?) so I replanted one of the rows. We got several pickings off of that. Not enough to freeze, but enough for us to enjoy them for several meals.

I picked 2 Anaheim chilies. Hey, better than nothing!

The cucumbers had a problem so we didn't get anything edible. However, we were blessed by the bountiful gardens of friends. We didn't go cucumberless this summer.

After our frost last week I picked off the eggplants from the two plants. I fried up a casserole dish full of breaded eggplant. We all enjoyed it immensely.
Before the frost we...ahem...The Man and the kids built a wall from some old bales of hay around our row of tomato plants. We'd picked a few small cherry tomatoes, but we had a bunch of green tomatoes of various varieties we wished to try to save.

We've been covering up the tomatoes with a tarp every night and uncovering them almost every day (oops). They are slooooowly ripening up.
I had been hoping to have enough tomatoes to can this year. Some church members who had a better-producing garden offered their surplus. About 6:00 a.m. the morning of the raccoon, about 40 lbs. of tomatoes appeared on our front porch.
I was able to can 7 quarts and 5 pints, with plenty left over for eating. I can't remember the last time I canned tomatoes. It had been at least 6 or 7 years.
Last week I was also able to dry some pears that another church member gave to us. We dried and canned apricots earlier in the summer when The Man's mom was here to help.
We also put a few quarts of apricots in the freezer. The Man and kids went out blackberry picking a few times this summer. Most of those are in the freezer.

That will probably be it for produce...unless we go apple picking. We need to put up some applesauce to last S through the winter.

There were plenty of volunteer and kid-planted sunflowers around the garden this year.

I planted some "flower garden in a box" seeds out by the well house this year. They still look pretty although the frost has killed off the zinnias.