freezing days

July is here and so is the garden bounty! 

Check out these monstrous plants.

cherry and grape tomatoes

cucumbers

pole green beans

roma tomatoes

from left: pole green beans, squash, pole lima beans, squash, potatoes, zinnias, morning glory

(if you squint you can see the roof of our home)

All the plants in the pictures above are a good 5-6 feet tall, 

except the squash which grows out and is 5-6 feet long!

The kids have found that playing with water guns among the garden beds 

provides great hiding places and have requested 

that we make the entire backyard a garden to make the game even more fun.

Who am I to say no to that request?

With all the goodness it's time to eat lots of veggies and freeze them for cold Winter days.

 blackberries

 carrots

 french cut green beans

 patty pan squash and yellow zucchini

Besides these vegetables I've also been making sauce with the roma tomatoes for the freezer.
Something new for me this year is adding cucumbers to my fruit smoothies.
With such an abundance I've been pureeing the cucumbers,
pouring it into ice cube trays, freezing, and then bagging them up.
I probably have close to 150 cubes of cucumber in the freezer
reading for smoothies.
I call that a whole lot of awesome.
I don't have any greens in the freezer, but maybe I'll have a large harvest in the Fall
(we recently planted cilantro, lettuce, swiss chard, spinach and kale)
to add that as well.

I hope to post some pictures soon of what we've been eating fresh from the garden.