Wordless Wednesday - More from My Garden Visiting

Harvest Monday

I imagine you can see that the theme is tomatoes for my harvests. Most of these have been quartered and frozen (I don't can). I served the goldies in a salad with cucumbers, red onions, and basil from the garden along with mozzarella cheese and a light dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar and sugar. It was a big hit at the dinner with nothing left in the dish. Other tomatoes have gone into scalloped tomatoes which is a summer favorite, on to BLT sandwiches, sliced with pepper, and into salads. I don't know how much longer the tomatoes will produce because the heat is getting to them. There are few to none blossoms out there.

Zucchini production is slowing as the plants are contending with invaders and the heat.

I will pick more peppers soon as they seem to max out their growing.

Cucumbers are still showing new buds and don't seem to mind the heat.

Finally the basil has recovered from whatever was ailing it and is giving me some nice sized leaves. I'll need to freeze that with olive oil since that was nice to have all winter last year.

You can see other gardeners' harvests at our host Daphne's Dandelions.

Author Recommendation

I haven't written a post about books in awhile so here goes for all of you expecting something along those lines.

Do you ever come across an author that you really enjoy reading and end up just getting books by that author? Well, that's what has happened to me of late. I read "Prayers for Sale" by Sandra Dallas and really enjoyed it. So instead of consulting my little book of recommendations the last two times I was at the library, I went to the Ds and looked for more books by Sandra Dallas. In the last two trips there I've come home with "The Chili Queen", "Whiter Than Snow", and "Alice's Tulips" all of which I've read and enjoyed. I'm now starting on "Tallgrass".

These are all historical fiction which I really like. They give you a window into what life was like in the past particularly parts of the West like Colorado during the time of the Civil War or afterward. The main characters are women, so easy to identify with and though I'm not a quilter each of the characters is a quilter and ends up connecting to other women with quilting.

If you have to decide on one of these to read look for "Prayers for Sale". It has been my favorite so far.

Joe Pye

My Joe Pye weed is in full glory right now and the butterflies are loving it.

Each spring I look for the new shoots to come up and cut back the dead stalks from the previous year. This plant is now in its sixth summer and as you can see has grown massive. It's in the perfect spot next to the pond.


When we moved here there was one in the glen next to the creek but I only saw it for one summer. I discovered one year that the deer eat it and that was the year I had no blooms.


Who is this Joe Pye and how did his name get on such a lovely late summer bloomer? According to wikepedia "Joe Pye, an Indian healer from New England, used E. purpureum to treat a variety of ailments, which led to the name Joe-Pye weed for these plants."

Joe Pye weed, a graceful soft contribution to the late summer garden. May you have many more years of bloom.