Fresh Perspective

One thing that hasn't gotten much blog play this summer is my garden. I love my garden - particularly this time of year when it's just churning out delicious things for us to eat! My parents are big gardeners so I always wanted to have one, but became even more passionate about having a garden when I started learning more about the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables. While we can't grow all of the dirty dozen at home, it's nice to be able to tackle a few items with homegrown, organic, not to mention DELICIOUS veggies. Here are a few highlights:

Butternut squash - sadly we only got one,
but we're going to enjoy eating it!

Carrots! I made a delicious carrot dish the other night thanks to Cooking Light.
It's amazing what a little maple syrup can do for carrots!

Eggplant - a family favorite! I've tried growing eggplant for several years and
these are the biggest ones I've ever grown, and there are a number of them. Yippee!

Poor rhubarb got a real trim before this photo was taken - but I love rhubarb,
so at least you can see we're putting it to good use...

Tomatoes are my favorite - and apparently F's too, as he's been
stealing them straight off the vine (even the green ones. Ew.)

We have an over abundance of cherry tomatoes this year - but we have some
bigger tomatoes that are getting ready to ripen. Can't wait to eat those up!

Earlier in the season we had lettuce and spinach coming out our ears. I plan to replant some more today. They don't like the heat, but will enjoy the crisp weather we're having (at least this week!) and check one more item off my shopping list at the grocery.

One of the reasons I think our garden has been so successful this year is thanks to our compost. We've been composting for about a year and it's awesome for so many reasons. First - it cuts down a lot on waste that we throw into the garbage or into the disposal. We can compost any fruit or vegetable waste (think peels, stems, pits, etc.) and we throw in grass clippings, leaves, egg shells and coffee grounds, too. Also - we keep a small bin in the house to collect items to go into the composter and it doesn't stink at all. Amazing!  We have so much compost it doesn't all fit in the bin! I think that the compost has really helped enrich the garden this year. Thanks to my hubby for keeping it going!

Our compost over-floweth.