What happened to summer?

We are having a lovely summer this year.  The garden looks amazing and the temps have been in the very comfortable 70s.  And dry.  If I weren't a gardener I'd be loving it (well, I'm still loving it...it's great fall-like sleeping weather) - but this just isn't working for those of us who want to see our tomatoes ripen! 

Here's the extent of our ripe tomatoes thus far:

Cute, right? These are sweet pea currant tomatoes and this is as large as they get.  They are great for salads and for a certain little girl to count and carry around and munch on. 

The rest of our tomatoes look more like this.  All green!  Many, fully formed.  I'm patiently waiting. 

 

Multiplier onions:  a favorite!

Morning glory teepee.  Note to self:  plant at least three MGs around this puppy next year.  Don't mess with the peas or runner beans (or, just mix a few in but be sure to let the MGs anchor the teepee).  We need big, bold, and dependable here.  The garden kitch, annuals, and small pots of herbs around the entrance made a nice touch.

Zinnia cutting garden

These are the two raised beds Brian built in early June as a birthday gift to me.  They are wonderful! 
I envision more in my future!

It looks to be a great year for pears!

I hope to be back in a few weeks to report that I have more ripe tomatoes than I know what to do with!

Cutting Garden!

(rows 1,2, 4)

This is the first year I've had a cutting garden, and I'm loving it! All of my cutting flowers were started from seed. In our yard, we have Sensation Mix cosmos (pinks and white) in Aaron's garden. They are beautiful, and very prolific! Some of the stems are taller than I am! In our garden next door (more on that later), I have five five-foot rows of flowers. Front, to back, they are: two rows of zinnias (mixed colors), Torch Tithonia (aka Mexican sunflowers, orange), and Bright Lights Mixed cosmos (orange, yellow, white), and more Sensation Mix cosmos. The zinnias are gorgeous! I'll definitely do more of those in the future, and I'd love to try other varieties, especially some with larger flowers. The Mexican sunflowers are beautiful, but they definitely need more than one foot between rows. They stems are huge and heavy and they've started to lean on the zinnias. They're also much taller than the 3' the seed package indicated...more like 6'! The stems are soft and fuzzy, which was fun and unexpected. When cut, they like to droop, so they're not my favorite cutting flower, but they are pretty. Row 4 (Bright Lights cosmos) is doing so-so. That, too, could use more space. There's lots of foliage but not very many flowers. I like them but don't necessarily need to do them in the future. Finally, the Sensation Mix cosmos in this garden are pathetic and nothing like those in Aaron's garden. Although they're all from the same seed package, most of the seedlings were nibbled on mercilessly by assorted small animals this spring. I have a feeling that the calla lillies in DS's garden were a deterrent to the hungry pests (nothing planted near calla lillies was touched -- it was wonderful!), but there were none in the garden next door to protect these cosmos.

(Aaron's Sensation Mix cosmos)