Early August, and finally, some tomatoes are on their way. They are all still green, but every time we look at the raised beds, their numbers seem to be increasing.

These are adorable.

I’m already dreaming of making sauce from scratch with these lovely plum tomatoes. Turn color already, would you!?

Meanwhile, the peppers keep growing. A few buds but no flowers yet. We planted a smidge late, so I’m not entirely surprised.

Back in June we cleared a small space in the field to plant some silver queen corn.

The first few rows came out just fine. Then I noticed that the one pound paper bag had a big hole on the bottom. Moments later the bag broke open and corn seeds leaked out all over the ground at alarming speed. Crap. I tried to at least spread the seeds around a little bit, though I assumed that birds and squirrels would get most of it.

But check this out…we actually have some corn plants!

All in one big, uneven cluster, but they’re still coming along nicely. Hopefully we’ll get a few ears out of it. Next year I’m going to borrow or rent a seeder to make life easy and assure a more orderly corn patch

In other news, the moon and stars watermelon foliage is starting to sprawl across the other end of the field.

Giddy!

A while back I planted some tom thumb carrot seeds in a window box in the sun room. The other day I noticed that they finally had little orange shoulders poking through the soil! So I yanked out a few like a reckless heathen.

All washed up and ready to snarf.

They are supposed to be dwarf carrots, however, I did pick them just a *wee* bit early so they’re more like micro carrots. How, um, fancy pants and gourmet? Ok, not really, but this was actually my first time successfully growing carrots indoors so I’m going to consider this a personal victory.

Meanwhile, the outdoor garden has been growing like mad. Our heirloom tomato plants in the raised beds have more than doubled in size in the last few weeks and many of them are already reaching the top of the cages.

And there are lots of bright yellow flowers, but no wee tomatoes. Yet. There are 20 plants spread throughout a couple of raised beds so if all goes well, there should be plenty to enjoy and share with family and chums.

Of course it’s just nice to see the plants so lush and healthy, especially after last years east coast tomato blight that wiped out most home and many commercial gardeners crops. This summers recent heat wave is certainly helping everything along, as are the subsequent rains, so hopefully it’ll be a better year for maters.

Flowers abound on our three Italian zucchini plants, too.

And despite the fact that bugs seem to be sporadically snacking on the leaves, the baby marbled eggplant is coming along nicely.

Watermelon plants! These are an heirloom variety called “Moon and stars” and it’s the VanDoren strain, so it’s supposedly the good stuff. One thing that’s mighty neato keen about moon and starts watermelon is that both the rind of the fruit and the foliage is dark green with yellow spots all over. I’ve grown these plants before but without fail, groundhogs have eaten them down to the roots. Hopefully this year will be different? Fingers crossed.

Also planted but not pictured: basil, sweet peppers and silver queen corn

We recently took a road trip to Pennsylvania to visit some chums. While we were there they hosted an elaborate culinary wing ding and wine tasting for 25 people. The evening involved copious amounts of divine, epicurean delights, fancy pants wines to match each course, and the most amazing corn pudding I have ever had in my entire life. We ate outside in the garden, which was decorated with oodles of stunning perennials, lemon trees and veggie plants. So pretty and peaceful.

Of course, half the fun of getting to our destination was enjoying the sights along the way.

And the endless array of vintage, antique and Amish themed shops filled to the brim with old school goodness.

Antique Treasures in Shartlesville, PA had so much awesome stuff. I seriously could have spent all day slowly perusing the shelves and displays. They had all sorts of lovely planters, figurines, dolls, trinkets and beautiful costume jewelry.

I bought these pretty bakelite buttons with irridescent rhinestones there. One was missing a stone so it was only $4 for the two. It was actually really hard to decide which buttons to get, since they had several trays of vintage buttons to choose from. The apple pin is by Coro, and was found at a yard sale right before we left for the trip. Love it.

Small statues outside of another antique store. The poor little chap seems to have lost his head and had it glued back on.

An old, huge and seemingly abandoned riverboat on the lawn. It’s not far from the nearby Riverboat Saloon but apparently the boat was already there when the owners purchased the bar in 2006.

We also rolled on over to Hershey Gardens, where I scampered through the fields of flowers like Carrie during the intro to “Little House on the Prarie.” Only I had a camera and a fist full of Claratin.

The garden featured fantastic colors. Like these! Swoon.

The start of the butterfly garden…

Wonderful markings…and it was kind enough to stay still so I could take a picture.

One of many rose gardens. There was a wedding taking place just past the arches.

Kermit is in there somewhere…

Beautiful!

A floral rainbow.