It’s been a strange gardening year.

On one hand I think I did more work in the garden this year than I have in the last two or three – in other words I was feeling a bit better and was more into getting my hands dirty and my arms scratched up by the roses, but then the weather was well … blah … more like a warm spring than summer, so the plants didn’t grow as well as I’d hoped earlier in the year and that put a damper on my garden enthusiasm.

It’s a stunted garden in some ways because of the cold July we had. My Cleomes are only just now starting to grow … they’ve reached maybe 3.5 to 4 feet in height where they should be about 6 feet tall by now.

My Tomatoes are possibly my best garden crop this year. In the past few years I’ve planted my tomatoes late, and well last summer was rainy and cold too so my tomatoes never really turned red. This year I planted them early enough that they grew well in June, stagnated in July with green fruit on the vine that wasn’t really growing and then come August the tomatoes really took off (as they should!).

We’ve been eating Tomatoes since maybe the first week of August (second at the latest) and it’s been great. There’s nothing better than a fresh tasty tomato right off the vine.

I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches, adding tomatoes to our salads and other foods and pretty soon I think I might try grilling some tomatoes or well maybe sauteing them as my sisters recipe calls for putting them in a frying pan (saute garlic in oil then cut a tomato in half and cook – apparently the garlic oil just goes right up into the tomato – delicious!).

I think I’ll also have enough tomatoes that I’ll be able to freeze some for tomato sauce.

I discovered a very easy way to freeze tomatoes a few years ago. Forget dropping them in boiling water to get the skin off before freezing. Just place whole tomatoes on a baking pan and place in the freezer. Let them freeze (while not touching other tomatoes) and then place them in a freezer bag. Later on when you thaw them the skins just slip off as they thaw and once thawed you can put them in a pot and start making a nice tomato sauce from scratch.

One thing that I must do soon is take some pictures of the garden and all the plants in bloom. For some reason I haven’t taken as many pictures this year as I usually do. I could be short on pictures for Green Thumb Sundays in the winter if I don’t start snapping away now!

How is your garden doing this week? What late summer/ fall flowers are blooming?