The late summer and (geeky) distractions

Well I guess I lied. I've been terrible about posting this week! What a funk I can go into, and all it takes is just a little head cold to put me there. Ick.

Anyway, I've been keeping busy here on the farm. I admit, a lot of my spare time has been going into sitting on my butt catching up on the new Doctor Who (10th doctor). We just finished the final David Tennant season so I feel like now I can get back to my normal life. Have I mentioned I'm a total geek, and I'm married to a man who is a geek to rival even myself? Yeah, we're pretty bad. I have tried to avoid the new Doctor Who stuff like mad, but it finally seeped into my awareness and I'm totally hooked. I watched a lot of Tom Baker and Peter Davison when I was a kid, but I never dreamed it'd come back with such force! (Yeah, so hooked.)

So aside from Doctor Who devouring my entire life, I've been up to some pretty serious harvesting. We've got tomatoes finally coming in, the summer squash have picked up again and the second planting of beets is threatening to take over my life. The best part of all of this year's harvest is that I've been able to sell a number of produce boxes to friends and acquaintances, so I'm able to start building a seed fund for next year's garden. Mwah hah hah.

 These boxes have been a lot of fun to pick, especially because if I know the person I'm picking for I can cater to them and their tastes. Jalepenos for the spice lovers, cucumbers for the picklers... etc.

I've harvested two itty bitty peppers so far. I just don't know why the peppers are struggling this year. They get flowers, the flowers appear to be pollinated and then the flowers fall off and nothing. Huh. I guess they're doing better than they were, we just missed a lot of earlier peppers...

The other disappointment this year has been the cucumbers! I had quite a few at the start, but they were shaped all strangely. Now the vines are all drying out and miserably gnarly. I just don't know why this is, especially because the melon plants seem totally fine and they're in similar areas of the garden. Hmm... curious..

Oh! We've also had a beautiful visitor in the brassica patch, living atop one of the sunflowers. 

Right, so what's going on in your late summer gardens? Is your harvest in full swing, or is it winding down?