End of August

We got this catmint from a neighbor. She wasn't kidding when she said it would take over.

Say it ain't so, summer. How can it be the end of August already? I do love Fall, but as I get older Winter becomes more and more depressing to me. And so these late summer days are incredibly bittersweet. We've had a lovely summer, full of warm sunny days and just enough rain to keep everyone happy. The gardens have achieved a blowsy, over-grown state that almost defies weeding. At this point I just let the vegetable garden go --- not that we were ever terribly diligent about the weeds! And the flower beds are so full that the weeds almost can't compete. The phlox are still trying to show off, and the black eyed susans are everywhere. The obedient plants are about to get into the act, though, and they've spread so far that soon they will be the dominant bloom. Oddly enough the hydrangea bush just produced a couple of flowers, and I'm not sure what to make of that. I guess they don't want summer to end, either, and think that we could fool it into thinking it's June with a couple of crazy blue blooms. I'm going along with it.

Turnips?

Planting the vegetable garden this spring was a bit of a scramble. With Oliver's two-year-old "help," we had to get a little creative sometimes in keeping him occupied and getting things in the ground. This has manifested itself in the nearly grown garding in quite a few ways. For one thing, there are random sunflowers in several spots throughout the garden. And, most rows have "walk-throughs" where the seedlings just weren't tough enough to survive Oliver's wandering.  The funniest thing, though is that we planted a lot of things that I couldn't remember planting. We have what I think are delicata variety summer squash, but I'm just not sure that's what they are. And this week I realized that we must have put in some odd varieties of beets. Seeing some non-beetlike greens early on, I had assumed they were swiss chard and happily eaten the greens several times. Then, I noticed the bulbs. Huh. That's not swisschard. So, I asked my sister and she said maybe they were turnips! Ah, turnips. I don't remember planting turnips, but whatever. I dug a few up (what the heck do you do with turnips?) and peeled them and oven roasted them. Kevin and I cut into a few on Sunday night ... and ... they tasted like beets. Delicious. And I'm pretty sure that's what they are. I think.