This Year's Gardens: Part 9

Finally.

Finally there are tomatoes. Not many, mind you, but for the first time all season, I picked more than two or three:

These are the outliers, but I am grateful they are here.

The large green-red tomato is a Cherokee Carbon Heritage tomato. It turns reddish-purple, supposedly, but it seems to be ripe enough to eat at this stage:

From the bottom, it is red, but not a bright red:

Interesting about the purple, given the name "Cherokee." I have not read to see if the tomato is a heritage from the tribe. But I know the Trail of Tears beans are. The pods of those turn purple when they are ready to pick and eat. I picked this handful the other day to see how "purple" they had to be to eat:

The answer? Pretty purple. The kinda sorta purple ones in the picture are not ready to eat. When totally purple, the bean inside is indeed black. And delicious. And beautiful:

I am about to call the zucchini patch a total loss. I would like to say it is my fault. I have been pretty lackadaisical about tending it and the weeds are rampant. My lack of care has no doubt contributed to the situation. But I find plant after plant dying, shriveling and decaying to nothing. A few have grown into large, healthy plants. But even the healthiest ones seem incapable of having their blooms set. When I take a closer look, I see very tiny insects swarming the plants. They are not ants, they are not winged, but they are everywhere. 

I wonder if they are also the reason that the cabbages and cauliflower in the same garden are chewed with little tiny holes and producing nothing. Nothing. In fact, the only planting in the Hej garden that not only seems healthy but is likely to come to harvest is my second patch of Trail of Tears beans. Thinking of how that bean made it from the 1830s to now, I am not terribly surprised that it is thriving. Its survival capacity is huge.

The flowers are thriving, so there are spots of color and bees everywhere. 

In the coneflowers:

And on the Agastache, which loves its new bed:

Bees are also in the cosmos, which are blooming in colorful bursts, but I have not been hunting them for their closeup shot there. I have been watching instead for a hummingbird, new to our combined backyards this year. I have seen it darting in and out of the cosmos, clearly drawn by the colors, and lingering around the lilies in the back, some of which are deep red.

A hummingbird! A wonder on wings! 

Cosmos without bees or bird

I am pretty much resigned to the reality that we will have to buy zucchini this year to stock our freezer. I might be surprised, but I don't think so. I still have seeds and could always try seeding a new patch, but...we'll see. As I adapt to my own lowering levels of capacity and what I could and could not do this year in the gardens, I know there will be changes next year. 

But there will be tomatoes. And basil. And bees. This year and next.