I can't come in empty-handed...

I took a quick tour of the garden before sunset, and even though I harvested a lot this morning, there were  a few things I had to pick. I pick the ripest raspberries every night, and  I took the peppers and tomato because the plants were so loaded with fruit I was worried they'd split.  There were more beans, but Sol and I ate them.

Lunch from the garden

Everything in my lunch today came from the garden- Gold Nugget and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, Yukon Gold Potatoes, yellow onions, basil, and a few yellow beans. But I bought the cottage cheese.

August Triage

The older I get the more I appreciate the concept of triage. Not in the original sense of evaluating patients in an emergency to decide who needs to be treated first, but as a metaphor for how to live. It applies to many aspects of my life, including work, relationships with other people, home maintenance, even deciding what to make for dinner.  And August is all about triage in my garden.
What to do first? Should I cut the grass, water, fertilize, plant, trim shrubs, weed, mulch,  harvest, save seed, or turn over my flowering cover crop?  There are so many things that need doing, especially if I want to maximize my vegetable production during this peak month.
Watering was the priority until last Sunday, when we got two days of soaking showers that revitalized the garden.  Weeding and mulching were also top priorities during the dry spell, since weeds and exposed soil took water away from the crops.
This week I'm focused on harvesting. I'm picking the cherry tomatoes, beans, squash and raspberries everyday in order to harvest these crops at the peak of flavor, and to keep the plants fruiting ( beans in particular stop blooming when mature pods on the plant tell them they have succeeded in reproducing).
I'm blanching and freezing what we can't eat now.  I also planted lettuce and spinach for fall crops, and scattered cover crop soybeans over the  now empty Yukon Gold potato bed.
What am I letting go?  Some weeds are getting ignored, especially those in now fallow beds.  The grass is long, since it has been hard to keep up with between the rain showers. I do keep the front lawn cut, because I like the yard to look neat from the street.
And I'm making time to eat with and appreciate the garden's output.  Purple pole beans crisp off the vine shared with Sol,  'Gold Nugget' tomatoes in a salad with cubed mozzarella and fresh basil, and mashed potatoes made with my own garlic and potatoes.  I don't just grow my own food to save money or avoid pesticides in my diet-- I do it because food fresh from the garden is delicious.

Now I'm waiting for the 'Mortgage Lifter' tomatoes to ripen. I have three lined up on the kitchen  counter.  According to the catalog descriptions, they will be ripe when fully pink.  Every day I pick them up, sniff them and caress them, trying to sense ripeness. I think I'll cut into the big one-- three quarters of a kilogram on my scale (1.6 lbs. )  tomorrow, and share it with my husband.  He'll eat it sprinkled with salt, and I'll add a drizzle of olive oil and sherry vinegar to mine.  Ok, I love beans, but a big ripe tomato is the taste of August.