Marigolds as you've never seen them

Marigolds are often thought of as just another flower that everyone has in the garden.  I just love the pictures Diane was able to capture of her marigolds in her garden today. 

Marigolds

Every garden has Marigolds.  Mine are nothing special (geez, you can sure see the weeds in these pictures).  This was taken after 3 1/2 hours of weeding today.  I need to take a week off of work to do ALL the weeding!

CSA

So, I decided to join a CSA this year.  In the past three years, I only grew a few vegetables at the community garden, but the theft from the gardens got so bad I was going to either get kicked out of the garden for being so bitchy, or get seriously hurt from attacking someone if I ever caught them stealing from the garden.  Neither option was a good one, so when I heard about the CSA, Community Supported Argiculture, see this link http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ I decided to join.  This one is with Connors Farm, see this link: http://www.connorsfarm.com/csa.htm  Besides the fact that I figured I was saving someone's life (probably my own), I thought it would be nice to save some money.  Well, I am going to blog about the CSA this year and how much I am saving.  Each week is suppose to equal approximately $30 in produce.  Today's haul from the farm included a lot of salad greens, so after using up almost a roll of bounty towels, I thought I would go out and buy a salad spinner.  So, off to Bed, Bath and Beyond I go.  No problem, there are many salad spinners to choose from.  I happen to like the XOXO brand, so I got there.  Cha-Ching!! $30, plus tax, spent on a salad spinner.  I also had to buy some thermal grocery bags and a bag of ice on the way to the farm.  It is Summer and I did not want all the salad greens to wilt, so the bags and ice, Cha-Ching, another $10!!!  Are you keeping track???  I spent $40 this week towards the CSA.  We will keep a running tally of monies spent as we go along.

No pictures from the garden today, we were suppose to have a garden meeting and clean up today, but it was raining, so this will be next week-end now.  I hope to get to the garden tomorrow to weed.  I leave you with a picture from a few days ago of a flower in my garden.  This is a Marigold.  Such a common flower, but this is such a pretty variety, don't know the name of it.

Garden update - good and bad

This week has been an interesting one at the garden. My squash plants all have perished to the ugly mildew. I just did not have the time or energy to fight this. It seems that it has swept through the garden attacking everyone's squash. I pulled up completely two of the 7 plants. One of the others *appears* to be trying to set some fruit, will have to check today to see if they have developed. I did pick over 2 pounds of green beans last weekend. While watering on Wed. I noticed that I need to pick some more, the plants are very prolific. Our pepper plants are heavy with peppers, I know I will be picking some today (if the looters didn't get them over the past 2 days). I did pick one eggplant which my daughter said was the best one she's ever eaten. The tomatoes are still holding their bright GREEN color, and if they ever decide to turn, I will have a bushel of tomatoes. The herb bed I planted is growing like crazy and gets tons of comments from the gardeners. Unfortunately, it looks like my much hoped for butternut squash plants already have the mildew virus and look doomed, but the Okra and Brocolli looks good. My beets never even sprouted. Radishes will be ready to pick on Monday (29 days). Our flowers are just glorious (both mine and my daughter's). Nothing exotic, but who would have ever thought that Marigolds could be so stunning. These flower heads are the size of mums! There has been a lot of theft from all the gardens, it appears that people are helping themselves to everyone's garden, from my tomatoes to celery. Squash, tomatoes, cukes, radishes have all be stolen from people's gardens. I'm telling you, when someone jumps over a locked fence area, under the cloak of darkness, how can they NOT know what they are doing is wrong!! I'm telling you, if I ever caught anyone, I would be writing my blog either from the hospital or heaven, because even at my age, I would go NUTS!! and probably get the s*** beat out of me. I hear there is a Fall Festivle on Sept. 9th at the other park where the gardens have been for 11 years, but I will have nothing to compete with. My friend Linda has sent me her favorite apple pie recipe so I can enter the pie baking contest. If anyone would like to share their favorite pie recipe with me, please do.