garden harvest...

We were surprised with a very early state-wide frost last week.  It hurt a lot of the crops, especially since they had a late start due to the very wet and cold spring.  But there is still some time before harvest for some of the beans and corn to fill out and dry up, and in the words of my farming father, "We want to finish this year up so we can start thinking about next year."  I am always a bit in awe of farmers, especially growing up on a farm, with how much they have to rely on God for so much in their profession and how much it changes every year.  Truly an example for us all.

Anyway, not a stellar year for farming all around, and that includes a lot of gardens as well.  We had a lovely garden this year with a lot of foliage, but not a terrible lot of fruit.  We did finally get a bunch of green beans in August to freeze for the winter, but that was probably our best vegetable this year.  The rest provided enough for some meals, but not the preserving that I was hoping to do.  Which being tired and pregnant I am actually just fine with right now! =)

Before the frost, the kids and I went out and brought in everything that was still out there.  They had a blast picking everything with me and then arranged the pile on the counter into a "salad" to show Dadda when he got home:

Not too bad - a 12 pound zucchini with a couple more smaller ones, a few green peppers, one squash, and a handful of tomatoes.  Made some chocolate chip zucchini muffins, fresh tomato sauce, some soup, and we called the garden year done.

Now remember the one non-vegetable that planted in the garden?  Morning glory by the windmill!  This photo was from July...

...and this is what it looks like now!  With all the humidity and heat in July and August, the vines went crazy, but we didn't get a single bloom on it until after the frost last week.  Don't understand, but we are enjoying the few blue blossoms and hoping a few more show up before the snow does!  But the morning glory vine wasn't the only thing to climb up the windmill.  Can you guess what else we found there?

Can you see it now?

Yep!  A cantelope was hanging about 2 feet off the ground from the windmill!  That and our watermelon did not fully ripen or turn out this year, but they were fun to grow and we will definitely try them again next year.

So now we can start the process of cleaning up, and then looking forward to plans for next year.  Because as G recited to us from her memory verse for this week:

"As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night,

will never cease."

Genesis 8:22