News From the Garden

I feel like I should smoke a corn husk pipe and sit in a rocking chair while I write this, but for those fellow gardeners out there, here is an update on ours:

We've been pulling in a lot of tomatoes lately, which is good because I heard a story on NPR yesterday about a tomato blight that is threatening to destroy most people's crops. I guess the blight was spread by people buying infected plants from box stores like Lowe's and Home Depot, so I'm hoping we'll be spared for buying from a small organic farmer.

Robbie is convinced he created a yellow pepper/tomato hybrid because our heritage variety of "yellow perfection" looks exactly like a small yellow pepper but has the taste and seeds of a tomato. It's one of his new favorite hobbies to show them to people and make them taste a bite.

The greens and herbs are heading into the home stretch but keep on giving. Things that normally go nuts like beans and peas and zucchini are slow (anyone else having this problem?), while we've been able to pull in plenty of beets, carrots, a small head of broccoli, and even a couple of giant spaghetti squash.

I suppose we still have plenty of time for more things to truly explode, including a melon plant and some tomatoes the size of volley-balls, but the darkness and crisp air are slowly and steadily creeping into our late summer days - a reminder that 6 months of winter hibernation are coming. Yuck. In exchange for this unbearable dreariness, Michigan at least rewards us with spectacular color and the endless apple orchards of Fall. But I can't help but wonder, where did the summer go?