A trip through the garden these days brings a smile to my face!
I love finding hidden treasures among the leaves! Like these cantaloupe…
We’ve averaged about 2 melons a day for the last week and bumped up to 6 for a couple of days! We brought 10 of them to our family gathering over the weekend to share. They have been so delicious!
We feel pretty rich having all-you-can fresh melon every day! Andsince new melons are still putting on – it looks like we may have melons till the first frost!
That watermelon is a treat! There were exactly 3 watermelons on the one remaining vine and we’ve been watching them carefully.
We ate one this week, and we have this one chilling in the fridge as I write. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!
As I was searching for ripe melons I was pleasantly surprised to find this beauty hidden in the leaves. I didn’t even think any pumpkin germinated – but there it was!
It’s leaves were so similar to the ornamental gourds that came up as volunteers that I didn’t see them before.
A quick search showed at least 2 pumpkins on the vine. At least we’ll have a couple of pumpkin pies from the garden at Thanksgiving!
The second planting of sweet corn has been wonderful – so much better than the first planting was! We’ve had fresh corn every other night for the last week or so. Yum!
And the best news of all – the tomatoes are finally starting to ripen! Slowly but surely we are getting some real beauties!
We have more than we can eat fresh – but still not enough to can – so I’ve been washing them and freezing them. When I have enough, I can thaw them and make my spaghetti sauce.
It’s not ideal – but as far as tomatoes go – we are well past perfect and into “just make it work”!
That pretty much sums up the entire garden season this year – far from perfect and into “just make it work”!
But right now I’m very thankful that I didn’t give up when things were so wet and cold this spring. I’m glad we persisted and kept replanting.
Now there’s another great life lesson learned in the garden!
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” Galatians 6:9
I’ve linked this post up at The Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.
Blue Jeans and Cotton Tees 
That’s the second time today I’ve heard about freezing tomatoes to use them in canning when you have enough ripe. I am totally going to have to do that. I never seem to get enough ripe at the same time to do any serious canning – so freezing them may be the answer I was searching for. I’m seriously jealous of your garden. My dream is to someday live in the country and have a big garden – right now I only have room for tomatoes and peppers.
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The Galatians verse you quoted is my email signature!! Listening to your gardening adventure inspires me so much! We live on the third floor here in Germany, in a very VERY small farming village. My land lady has a huge garden and I always see her working so hard (she’s so kind and brings up extra of everything there) I would LOVE to be able to grow some of my own food one day! I am glad your garden was beautiful, LOL our slogan as Military Spouses most of the time is “just make it work”. And it does just fine for the most part! ❤ God bless lady.
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It’s so fun hunting for watermelons -they sound so good.
vickie
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What an amazing melon harvest you got there! I’m growing my first cantaloupe from a grocery store melon seed this year, and really excited about the weekly progress, as evidenced by my documenting of its step-by-step progress on my blog. The first one is always special, right?
Hope the rest of your tomatoes ripen soon!
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We’ve had exactly that kind of growing season too – though your melons are incredible! I’m hoping that our tomato blossoms will turn into tomatoes and we’ll have a nice October/November harvest. We’ll see. Thanks for sharing!
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I found a hidden treasure the other day, too! Some squash are growing fabulously in the sheep pasture! I guess they must have germinated from the seeds leftover from the squash I tossed them LAST summer! 🙂
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Your melons are beautiful! It has been a bad tomato year. But at least last year was spectacular.
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Aah melons, if only I could grow melons……
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I love discovering hidden treasures in the garden! They are such a wonderful surprise! 3 years ago the kids threw some miniature pumpkins into the garden after Thanksgiving (I don’t know why they didn’t put them in the compost pile). I expected seedling to sprout the next year, but they didn’t and didn’t think about them again. This year I had a volunteer plant show up, I didn’t know what it was, but decided to let it live in case it was something yummy. I looked under the leaves yesterday and discovered 6 miniature orange pumpkins!
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What a beautiful harvest!! I’m afraid our tomatoes were quite sad this year, but I know we’ll be trying again next spring!!
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I am so envious of those melons. Wish I knew your secret.
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Congratulations on so many melons- they are not always easy to grow! And I just threw two bags of tomatoes in the freezer, too, waiting for enough to can. *sigh*
Thanks for sharing at the TGP!
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I have had an abundance of cherry tomatoes this year since it is the only tomato my husband managed to plant thinking they were different kinds. I have been freezing them after each picking to use in chili, and other dishes just thrown in whole and let cook down. So far it has worked out great. We have had a few cucumbers, a couple of yellow squash and okra. I am not fond of okra, but the husband loves it. We have had bell peppers galore, so been chopping those and freezing those also. Onions from the store, to preserve them longer, I am chopping those and freezing those also. Works great to freeze things for later.
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