Garden Update

My long suffering garden is in full swing right now. We've had our first fresh made pasta sauce of the season, enjoyed quite a few zucchini breads and I'm thinking tonight I shall turn some of our tomatoes, bell peppers and onions into pico de gallo. As you can see from earlier blog posts we also have been enjoying fresh strawberries over cake, dipped in chocolate, warm and unwashed standing in the front yard, etc.

I didn't expect these to start our so neon yellow. They will eventually turn a deep orange.

There are two plants I'd like to high light in this post because I'm very excited about them. The first is our Cinderella pumpkins. I swear these squash grow so fast you can see it happening. I guess that makes sense since they are going to get pretty big (up to 25 lbs.). I imagine there are going to be a lot of pumpkin recipes posted here when fall comes. I'm particularly fond of winter squash in Thai curry so I'm sure that's where a lot of it will end up. The pumpkins vines are huge as well. We've had to continually redirect themto keep them from climbing up our palm tree. One vine is even making a run for the other side of the yard by creeping across the path that separates our raised beds from our squash bed.

The second plant I'm really excited about is our eggplant. I bought these on a whim and was pretty certain they wouldn't do well in our chilly climate. I planted them up against the house because even though that area doesn't get a ton of sun, the house traps heat and keeps that area warmer as the general air temperature cools. So far I've counted five egg plant growing away out there. Inspired by some of David Lebovitz's most recent blog posts about a trip to Israel, I think I might try and BBQ some of these once they're mature. I think the smokiness of a charcoal fire would pair well with the already smokey flavor of eggplant.