Julian's U-pick strawberry patch

Julian is a crack-up. Every time he goes out in the front yard he scans the strawberry patch for any little spot of red, then points at it and says "Mom! Mom!" until I either pick a strawberry for him or tell him that it isn't quite ready yet.

The veggie garden is really coming along. There's corn, zucchini, japanese eggplant, 3 kinds of peppers, 3 kinds of tomato, Swiss chard, 2 kinds of artichoke, 3 kinds of basil, 2 kinds of melon, English cucumber, dwarf Meyer lemon and some other stuff...oh, strawberries. There were a few different kinds of lettuce, but they bolted (flowered) so lettuce is done for now.

Green beans were kind of a bust, I didn't pick them in time and they got tough.

I'm waiting and waiting for the heirloom tomatoes to ripen up. I have jalapeno peppers too, so we'll be making our own salsa fresca. Yum.

You can't slack off when you've got a producing garden. You eat food when it's ready, or preserve it somehow, or else you just miss out completely. The window of vegetable opportunity closes, no second chances.

The corn is really good. The tomatoes are remarkably sweet. The zucchini is unbelievably prolific *and* good. Cucumbers, delicious and not bitter at all, even the skin. LOVE the garden!

I really wish I had a fig tree, but our neighbors down the street have one in their front yard. It's sort of tucked away in an empty part of their yard behind some bushes, and no one seems to be eatign the fruit, so when I walk Bugs past there in the evening I snag a few ripe figs and scarf them down.