Growing Summer

A while back I mentioned a couple of pots that I had done everything possible to kill, and yet the plants came back to life.  Here are the cannas I was sure were gone.  Not only did they grow back, but they are blooming right now.  This year I'll do a better job of digging them up after they finish blooming and storing them for the winter.  They didn't get very tall this year and I think it's because they're still living in the pot with all the old bulbs from last year.  Hopefully digging and storing them, then replanting them in their own pot next year will allow them to get a bit bigger in the future.

  

 I've also mentioned that I got a little green pepper plant for free when I bought tomatoes from the greenhouse.  I peeked under the leaves the other day and found this tiny little pepper!  I have no idea how to tell when they are ready to be picked, but I can't wait to try it out.  This guy is pretty small, so I'll give it some more time before I pick it.

My watermelon plant has officially taken over the whole garden at this point.  Note to self, plant it far, far away from every other plant next year.  Watermelon plants are a vine, and the tendrils from the watermelon vine have grown up to my tomato plants and wrapped themselves around the branches of the tomato plants.  Here are a couple baby watermelons that I've been watching.  They're actually growing pretty fast, so I hope we'll have watermelon ready to eat in the next week or so.  The Farmer doesn't really like it, so I'm going to have an awful lot to eat!

When I was out at the garden taking pictures of the produce, the sun was shining through the trees just right and hitting the sunflowers so beautifully.  I had to stop and take a few pictures of those as well.  

And no post about gardening would be complete without the latest zinnia picture.  I love this picture because it shows how intricate all the petals are!  

My brother, sister-in-law, and niece came to stay with us for a couple of days and it was so fun to be able to cut flowers from the yard and use them to decorate the guest room for them.  

I didn't take any pictures of this, but last weekend I ordered 6 dozen ears of sweet corn from a local grower and on Saturday I put it all up.  I'm not sure the actual term for what I did with the corn; growing up we always just called it "putting up corn."  I husked it all, washed it, boiled it for a few minutes, then plunged it into ice water to cool down and cut it off the cob as soon as it was cool to the touch.  Then I scooped all the corn into small containers and bags and froze it.  It's sort of a lot of work, but I grew up eating corn this way and it completely ruined me from being able to enjoy the frozen stuff you buy at the grocery store.  Corn put up this way tastes so fresh and sweet, it was worth all the work to be able to enjoy that taste in the middle of winter.

I actually bought 8 dozen ears of corn and only put up 6 of them, so I need to get something done with the rest of them.  I'm sure The Farmer and I will eat some of them fresh on the cob in the next few days (we've already done this once), and I hope to put the rest up this week.  I got 24 containers of corn out of the first 6 dozen ears I did, so if I can get 6 more containers out of what I have left, that would put me at 30.  Then I'd like to do one more batch of at least 6 dozen more, to get us to a total of at least 50 containers.  Having one container to pull out each week over the next year will be so tasty!