Green pea vines climbing up their bamboo trellis.
Green peas and green beans in with the harvest.
So many shades of green! 
Starting with the perfect apples, yellow transparents fresh from the orchard, then sprinkled with cinnamon, a squeeze of fresh lemon added, then butter on top, the filling is thick, rich and creamy. Both sweet and tarte, it's the perfect apple pie filling.
Pretty calendula, also known as the pot marigold, and chamomile flowers were picked just a few hours earlier and truly made this a luxurious mixture. Easy to grow, I planted the calendula in my garden this year by directly sowing the seeds in amongst a bed of other flowers. Although an annual, once established, will tend to reseed itself year after year. The chamomile, a plant tucked in a corner of my herb garden and another flower bed at my Happy Valley garden, is another one of those annuals that when once established will continue to reseed itself for years to come.
Carefully remove petals from calendula flowers and gently wash them with the chamomile blossoms and fresh sprigs of herbs. Dry completely then place in a saucepan with the olive oil. Heat, stirring frequently, until the boiling point. Remove from heat, cover and let steep for at least a thirty minutes. Strain the oil, squeezing as much of the oil as possible out of the flower petals and herbs. Stir shea butter into hot oil until it dissolves. Add beeswax and stir continually over a double boiler until the wax has melted. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon essential oil. Cool. Once the mixture is cool, place in a food processor and process until the mixture is creamy and somewhat fluffy. Fill jars and cap with lids. With no artificial ingredients or preservatives, whipped calendula body butter will keep for up to one year when stored in the refrigerator. Because it is whipped soft and fluffy, it instantly melts when applied to the skin and feels very refreshing. Makes four 8-ounce jars. Enjoy!
This seemed the perfect time to make a bamboo trellis. With four eight-foot bamboo poles, one three-foot post and a roll of twine, we created a very sturdy trellis. Forming a frame with two poles at each end, both planted deeply into the soil in an X shape, the three-foot post was placed through the bamboo X. Twine was wrapped around and tied at the connecting points to secure all of the pieces together. Additional rounds of twine were wrapped along the posts as supports for the pea plants as they continue to grow and attach themselves to the trellis. Thanks for your help with those tall parts that were way out of my reach!
The caterpillar of the Virginian Tiger Moth or Yellow Woolley Bear Moth, I found him crawling on a squash leaf. After relocating him to the wooded lot next to our gardens in the hopes of providing him a better environment than my vegetable plants, I went on to tend my garden.
Stopping at nearby Joe's Gardens after I had finished caring for my garden, they had just put out their new crop of garlic braids. With fond memories of how my father often give us a braid of garlic fresh from his garden, I once again have a great supply of garlic hanging in my kitchen.
Thanks to friends Ken and Gwen, I seem to have an over abundance of turnips growing in my garden this year. Even after sharing them with as many friends as will take them, I still find myself trying to come up with creative ways to serve them. Somewhat to my surprise, it turns out that one of my favorite dishes this summer is garlic mashed turnips.
Garlic Mashed Turnips
Chilled Summer Squash Soup
In the rose family, the underside of the leaves are white and the berries, besides being delicious, can be used for dye and the roots boiled for a tea that can be used for diarrhea and menstrual pain. A shrubby weed native to Eurasia, the plant aggressively forms dense thickets that have become a thorn in the side of Mother Nature as they take over entire yards, stream channels and ditch banks, choking and shading out nearly all other vegetation in their way.
Yet we like them and each year anxiously watch for signs of their ripening fruit! With pails, boxes and buckets in hands, this is the season when hundreds, thousands of people are seen along the roadsides, streams and yards, anywhere those large patches of blackberry brambles happen to have taken over, picking those big juicy berries.
It took three of us to harvest our container full - one armed with big pruning shears to cut away the long thorny branches that seemed to protect the huge clumps of ripe berries, one to pick the berries and one to entertain our dogs. Finding a list of 183 blackberry recipes on the Internet, it's fun to think of the options. Maybe we'll pick more!
I like knowing the source of the foods I eat. These berries, from a large clump of blackberry brambles in the yard of a pesticide-free property on the Trigg Road in Ferndale. After being carefully washed, sorted, mashed, and getting their seeds strained out, they were cooked down to make blackberry jam. Now they fill jars to be enjoyed another day.
Meanwhile, look at today's harvest from my plot at the Happy Valley Community Gardens - flowers, peas, a cucumber, a zucchini, a yellow crook neck squash, herbs and a half dozen patty pan squashes. Looks like I'll be experimenting with different ways to prepare patty pans!
For lunch, I fixed one of the patty pans with my George Foreman grill. After slicing the squash, I drizzled a small amount of olive oil over them and sprinkled pieces of the herbs I'd just picked from my garden - parsley, basil and calendula leaves - then cracked lemon pepper over all.
Snapdragons, fresh from my garden!
Fresh red and purple plums mixed together.
Then cooked with a few sprigs of rosemary picked fresh from my garden.
Absolutely delicious!
