Late August

Hard to believe it's the last week of August. The garden is producing copious amounts of cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce, acorn squash and several varieties of tomatoes. The eggplant plants look great but have not produced many eggplant at all (though the ones I did get were dee-lish), and the yellow squash is not too productive either. We have had so little rain this summer that regular watering has been necessary, and the locals at the farmers market say that the heat is what has stunted the eggplant and summer squash. Makes me feel better to know that no one's had luck with some of the crops that have done poorly for me this summer...in spite of the primo baa-doo. The beautiful pansies that I bought two years ago at Snug Harbor Farm (a favorite!) have come back, as promised, and they have been blooming all summer. Shocking to me, as I thought pansies were really a cooler weather flower.  I put them in a stone planter that I made many years ago, and they sit on my front porch where I get to see them many times, every day. The white clematis turned out its one, token blossom, but I enjoyed it for almost two weeks; it is almost 6" in diameter and each petal is perfectly formed. Not too sure why it only has one bloom per season, but that one flower is spectacular and worth the wait. The sheep have been keeping the field nicely mowed after Bill bush-hogged it, and I have enjoyed watching them jump over the creek, one by one, and go up to the back field to graze. They are a beautiful sight up on the hill, under the stance of trees. It's almost time to pull Bill and the wether out from the ewes, and I'm rigging up a new system this week to hopefully help me control the breeding more than I have been able to in past years. Always something to do here at the Salty Ewe. But, today I am taking it easy, waiting for the rain, and probably making yet more loaves of zucchini bread.