Weekend Update

I did not scrape or paint at all yesterday.

In the morning, Dearest O and I went to the farmers' market, which we haven't done in a few weeks. (Guess why.) After we came home, I spent some time cleaning up the garden, which was and still is a mess, and puttering in the kitchen: I roasted some red peppers to freeze for later use and made crushed tomatoes to use in the sauce for dinner.

Can you believe that almost three pounds of tomatoes--a mixture of Black Plum and San Marzano--made only about 2 cups of crushed tomatoes? I thought I'd have jars and jars. Good thing there are still a lot of tomatoes yet to use. (I brought in almost 5 pounds of San Marzanos yesterday afternoon.)

I harvested our first (and probably last) melon of the season!* It's a Hime Kansen watermelon, just 2 lb. 11 oz. They're supposed to be small, because they're "personal size" watermelons. O and I shared about half of it for an afternoon snack. It's very yummy--refreshing and just slightly sweet.

There's only one more watermelon, the shape of and roughly the size of a softball, out there, but I don't think it'll ripen before the weather turns. Of the Ichiba Kouji (cantaloupe) melon plants, there are a few that haven't been killed off by the cucumber beetles/bacterial wilt. There are maybe 7 melons on the vine, but I don't think any of them will ripen in time either. I've been babying one along for weeks, and it's just not giving any sign of wanting to ripen. Oh well!

I'm just a dollar short of harvesting $800.00 worth of produce from the garden! (That doesn't include all the stuff that went to the compost pile.) Actually, it's over $800.00, if you count the potatoes and spaghetti squash "curing in the field."*

Gotta go. It's off to the Monona Farmers' Market and then back to scraping for me!

Cheers-
b

*Photos to follow, time permitting.