How did my garden grow?

 Exuberantly! I haven't written about the garden as much as I sometimes do, but it was a very good summer for growing vegetables in Canarsie. Our one hot spell a nasty sticky one, which is hard on the people but the plants prefer that to a dry heat wave, and it just wasn't that hot, I don't believe it ever quite broke 100 this summer. There was plenty of but not too much rain, I only watered a couple of times -- although I did get spared a couple of trips out by friends who were nice enough to water just about the time I would be thinking about a morning trip to the club. By July I was giving produce away, and not just to TQ, with whom I would share my veggies with if I only had one tomato all summer. Unless I gobbled it up the minute I picked it, which does sometimes happen after a paddle. Now if I only had beets I wouldn't share with him but that's just because he doesn't like beets. Anyways -- 

As you can see, I definitely had more than one tomato (and these are bigger than they look, my hand in the foreground is throwing off the perspective). I'm hoping that I stuck the tags from the seedlings in the ground, these may not be as visually exciting as some of those funky, lumpy, technicolored heirlooms, but this particular variety had some of the sweetest fruits I've ever grown. I planted 2 varieties, Rutgers and I forget, and they worked very well together - the other ones came in earlier and these ones started just as the first ones were slowing down.

The cukes took off like they were trying to make up for last year, when I got one cucumber and then the entire vine shrivelled up and died within the space of a week or so - one weekend it was fine, next weekend it was looking very sad, the next weekend, pffft, all pau. This year, it was all I could do to keep them from strangling everything else in the garden (bad cuke! bad cuke! get your tendrils off of that tomato! Back on your trellis!) and oh, cukes cukes and more cukes!

Basil and chard are both doing great. Chard was another funny one last year - I just couldn't seem to get it to start. It was sort of a cold and rainy spring as I recall, maybe they didn't like it. All I know is that I kept planting more seeds but they just didn't come up. I eventually put in some pepper plants in the chard's spot. The failure of the chard was weird because all the other years, tat was the most trouble-free & generous thing in the garden - I could pick enough leaves for dinner for myself & sometimes TQ every time I went to the club and they'd just keep chugging, I always thought that if I was genuinely planting for sustenance, not just as a hobby (so glad that's not the case), I'd probably go with the chard - it goes so steadily and for a good long time, keeps leafing until a point in the fall when everything else is done. Back to normal this year, I may have enough to freeze again like I have in years past. And yes, there will be pesto. Mmmm.

I got some beets this year, that was another thing I tried planting that didn't go last year. I haven't quite figured out beets, maybe I'm squeezing too many in but I had four beet-sized beets that I've already pulled & eaten, and the rest are these little marble-sized things. Now they don't mind cooler weather so I'm toying with trying for a 2nd round where I pulled up the first ones - might be too late but I have some old seeds in a kitchen drawer so it would be easy enough to experiment.

Herb bucket's rosemary, sage and thyme (nope no parsley), is coming along - nowhere near caught up to what I lost to Sandy (the rosemary bush in particular was up to my waist) but healthy enough. I've been picking a little but mostly just letting 'em grow.

And then of course there's the onion, sole survivor of Sandy, made it through the flood and never looked back. Now that is one tough plant. Dat's a Brooklyn plant, youse guys.

And that is how my garden grows, 2013 edition.

Oh - and speaking of fresh food? You know your egg is fresh when: 

PS - I'm posting this today instead of pictures of the 21st Annual Tugboat Race because in the end I did decide I had to go to work today. Wasn't able to finish one of the 2 projects I wanted to finish because the system I needed was apparently down for maintenance, argh, but I did get the boss's filing done (yay) and then there was another somewhat tedious task that's been sitting on my desk for ages; it wasn't particularly time-sensitive but it's been on deck long enough that it was really bothering me, so since I couldn't do what I wanted to do I figured I'd knock that one out instead, which I did, and then there were a few other odds and ends I tied up, plus I did do a little desk cleaning (not that you'd know it to look at my desk but it's better than it was). All in all a productive day, and I did get to enjoy the tug race vicariously as various friends of mine posted from the course. Here are some excellent pictures from Tugster, who was on board the Deborah C. Miller (the one with the donkey!), and John was lucky enough to be on board the John J. Harvey and also AMAZING shots. Wish I could've been there - don't feel too bad for me though, the work day was just making up for taking one more vacation day in August than I could really afford, and I sort of suspected it at the time but decided to just go for it anyways. Summer's short!