Black Eyes and Peas

Gotta love it when your kid comes home from school with a black eye. Shouldn't they call me if he gets beat up? Just kidding.  I guess one of his best friends (who is shorter than Bronson) accidentally stood up really fast and head-butted Bron.

On a totally unrelated note, my "farm" was sure starting to look amazing!  I have to share a few pictures of it in late august.

These first two pictures are not of my plot.  The lady with the plot right next to ours didn't plant vegetables.  She filled her whole space with dahlias!

These pictures don't to it justice at all!  It was such a pleasure to be next to her.  Dahlias are one of my favorite flowers!  I grow dozens in my own flower beds.  In the few times that she and I happened to be there at the same time, we bonded over our shared love and gave each other tips, etc.  

Just look at those beautiful tomatoes! We had such a  colorful and delicious combination of tomatoes this year.  And the fun part was that my two older boys really got into it with me!  They learned all the different names and they each had their favorites.  I loved to see them after church one Sunday giving tomatoes out to the elderly people in our ward who don't garden any more sayng, "This is an Old German, You'll love it." or "This one looks bad, but it's the best tasting.  It's a Black Krim so it just looks darker." We also loved the huge, pink Mortgage Lifters and we had a couple of the Campbell's DX variety.  Actually, they were only okay.  The heirlooms were so much tastier! 

We grew squash and mini pumpkins (and a few volunteer pole beans) up a fence panel.  They were lovely!

And we had about a dozen different pepper plants.  So great!  I don't think I got pictures of the bush beans (purple are my new faves!) and beets, but they were amazing as well.  Also, since the plots are close together, they asked us not to grow crops that could shade our neighbors, like corn or large sunflowers.  Since I was able to grow most of my other crops at the "farm" I had room in our home garden to plant lots of corn. And zucchini, peas, potatoes, and cucumbers. 

Here's a bucket of our cherry tomatoes.  The large ones were a volunteer plant, so I don't know what they are.  The little ones were Sweet 100's.  I grew to hate them over the summer.  The plant in too big, there's just too many of them, and the flavor isn't as great as other varieties.  The Sunsugars, on the other hand, are worth every effort.  They really are like candy.