Another Gardening Report

This morning, as early as 7 am, I went out to the garden to take some photos and profit from what an early morning can give you. I'm not talking about the dirt on my boots, created due to the dew, but the light that is not too strong at those hours.

This is the most exciting time of the year as you get to enjoy the result of your hard work, it done right, not to mention the health benefits you can get by eating organic, home grown fruits and vegetables. But before I start flooding you with photos, let's start the morning right! By right I mean the way village people do it, or used to do it!

Cheers!

Ok, let me explain what I mean by this. What you see in my hand is a glass of cherry liqueur, with a few cherries in it. This is homemade and heavenly good. (Don't look at my manicure or the lack of it as this is gardening time, no room for manicure here ☹️)

I'm rarely drinking and never in the morning, but there's been a custom at the countryside, men always had a glass of brandy before breakfast as they said it's good good for the appetite. That may be true as the alcohol it makes your stomach agitated and you have to eat, but otherwise it's the worst thing you can do as it's very unhealthy and can cause addiction. So the photo was just for the photo shoot, nothing more and now let's get serious :D

Finally I've managed to get a good shot of the raspberry. There's plenty of it now, so tomorrow morning I need to harvest what I can and see what I'm going to do with it.

We still have running beans, I'm not sure how much these have been affected by the heat but these are looking good.

Savory is what we usually use for cabbage soup and other dishes. At this point savory is ready to be dried. We have plenty, so this year I'm going to store and gift some to my cousin and aunt as well. Why waste something, when you can gift it to others, right?

Eggplants are midway I'd say, still need a month but this is a tricky one. No matter what we do, how we grow them, we never get the desired result. Compared to what farmers grow down south, this is far from the desired one. Most likely the soil is not suitable, I suppose eggplants need more sandy soil. This is why we only have a few, exactly what we can eat once or twice and we usually buy the rest from the farmers market, that goes into the freezer for winter consumption.

Have you ever seen an eggplant flower? This is how it looks like. I've seen it countless times but have never noticed those spikes. Looks pretty dangerous :)

This is the celery, but it is a bit different from you may be used to. We use the roots mostly and less the leaves as this has a very strong flavor and can't use much as it can ruin the dish easily.

And now comes the fun part. This is the cucumber flower.

And the cucumbers. Please note, these are tiny cucumbers, that look big because this is a macro photo.

Tomatooooes!!!! The queen of the whole garden!

This on the other hand is not a macro photo and this tomato is huge.

Tomatoes first are green, then white, then they turn red, or yellow or black, according to the type. These are not turning white, after which they will become red.

Peppers are still small and we can't figure it out why. The neighbor had the same seedlings and has bigger peppers, so it must be the soil I suppose.

This is all pepper but each one is small.

Squash, 4 types, which I love so much as it's easy, light and healthy as well.

Beans are almost ready, but we're going to leave some to dry, to have seeds next year. These are going into the jar.

Looking at the crop we have, I must say how grateful we are for having such an abundant harvest. There's drought everywhere in the country, there are places where the last rain was 3 months ago. Imagine those poor farmers, having nothing this year. We're lucky to have water and a watering system. Otherwise we would not have anything at all in the garden.

I'm not sure what the rest of the gardening season is going to be like, but so far so good. I don't think anything major is going to happen, my dad is not so sure about this, but let's hope the rest of the season is going to go according to plan.