Full Force Harvest

The Young Urban Farmers' garden is bearing fruit galore. I love this program. In review: I give my backyard land; the Young Urban Farmers do the work. The result? Fresh (and I mean fresh) local veggies in dishes like last night's tomato, basil and feta salad.

Those small green lanterns pictured are ground cherries. My uber-farmer niece makes them into pies. I just peel off the shells and pop the little morsels in my mouth whenever the urge strikes, which is frequently.

Sadly, we were struck with powdery mildew and the vine crops have suffered. You can see some residual sadness in the tomato plants. But we're not going hungry and my earlier concern about winding up an unwilling host to a family racoon reunion hasn't happened. Amazing.

Carrot Fiesta

Aaack! (Shriek of delight.) These gorgeous beauties erupted from our garden plot. Crazy Elaine (Young Urban Farmers) planted not only seeds for orange carrots, but for red, yellow and white ones, too.

Peeling skims off the redness, I discovered. Or--if you want to get silly--you can peel only occasionally for striped carrots. Regardless of carrot colour or goofy peeling, all the varieties taste equally sweet.