Summer in Full Swing

     Every season has something wonderful to offer but in terms of gardening nothing can beat summer. And it has been a wonderfully warm and sunny summer in Seattle so things are ripening faster than usual. My favorite snacks are the blackberries that make up the fence on the north side of our property. Last weekend I needed a quick snack so I made this:

     On Sunday we made blackberry and cherry pie with vodka pie crust. The cherries we bought but the blackberries all came from our yard. And today I got enough blackberries to mix with some cherries and make this year's first batch of jam.

     I find making jam to be super fun and then I end up with jam. Yum! Pitting the cherries took a little while but I did it while watching tv. Multitasking! Then I put the berries and the cherries in a big pot with two cups of sugar and boiled it down for about half an hour. I found that if you just get rid of enough water then you don't need to add extra pectin because it is naturally in the fruit. This was a small batch of jam compared to the batches of plum jam that I was doing last year but the smell of blackberries cooking has to be the best smell in the whole wide world.
     In another week or two we are going to be inundated with tomatoes and will be starting the ketchup making. Here is a shot of some of those beautiful little jems.

      That is just a small section of the tomatoes that we have growing. They are a little close together but we are already making a plan for next year to give them some space. This is only our second summer gardening so I am still thrilled when things don't die. We are particularly excited about the two luscious figs growing on our little fig tree.

 

     We bought the fig tree this spring on a whim. We were at City People's which is an upscale garden store here in Seattle and they had fig trees for $15 which they said would grow and fruit in our climate. Heck yeah! So we got one and put it in a big container thinking it would take years before we got any fruit from it but low and behold! Go Figgy! 

     Here is a little sampling of some of the garden's bounty so far this year. We have more lettuce than we could ever eat. I planted some in the front and then our neighbor gave us some more lettuce starts. He doesn't speak English so we couldn't explain to him that we already had lettuce growing in the front yard. Nice guy though. Below the lettuce is a cucumber. We bought three plants in late spring and then thought they were going to die. Only for them to go berserk, take over half the garden and produce at least one giant cucumber a day. At the top right are fava beans. Last year I bought some at the farmers market. They cost $4 a pound but are really yummy and I have never seen them in a grocery store. We are going to grow a LOT more fava beans next year.

     Here is a shot of the garden in all its summer glory. I know I need to start thinking about fall/winter gardening. But first for dinner tonight we are having the first of the red runner beans with...well I don't know yet. Growing all these wonderful things means you have to figure out what to do with them. But there are worse things in the world.