Sun, sun, sun!

Wow, we've had almost a week now of straight sun, which has been great for my garden after so much rain. My tomatoes are finally starting to ripen. I was beginning to think they'd stay green until the first frost! I've harvested maybe a dozen grape tomatoe--spread out over days so never enough for a salad--but now I've got bunches turning red. And a tomato that's been bigger than my fist for weeks is finally orange! Hurray!

On another garden-miracle note, I've got a zuchinni growing! Now, any of you who've grown zuchinni may not see this as such a big deal, as it tends to be the plant that just won't stop producing, leading to bags of thigh-sized zuchinnis left hanging on neighbors' mailboxes, but my squash got attacked this season. It got a nasty bug that looked like big fat maggots (ewwwww) which ate my plants from the inside out. I got one summer squash, and then it all went downhill. Out of four plants (two summer squash and two zuchinni), all that's left is this one, and it wasn't looking so promising a week or so ago. I had been trying to pull off some of the really wilted leaves when the whole plant tipped sideways--and broke almost completely off the root (the bug chews up the inside of the vine at the bottom, leaving a sawdust-like residue and little support for the plant). But I decided to give it another chance, tilted it back up, found the offending bug (hopefully the only one!) and covered the distintigrating vine with some mulch.

Lo and behold, it seems to have worked! The plant looks healthy and hasn't wilted at all, even after days without rain (first symptom of bug: wilt in sun), and I think the sun has kept the slugs from eating the flowers (yeah, it's been an interesting first-time gardening experiences with creatures!) so pollination actually happened and there's a lovely green zuchinni growing away.

So the tomatoes are ripening, I'm still getting lots of green beans, I've picked three cucumbers and have more than a dozen more growing (anybody have good recipes for cukes?), and a miracle zuchinni has appeared. So other than my fist-sized watermelon that rotted on the vine, the garden's great!

Next post: it's mid-August, but all signs point to fall....

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