This is our garden as of this morning, before the blast wave hit us. It’s 100+ degrees out there now, and our cucumbers and tomatoes are love-love-loving it. The two plants up front are Big Boy tomatoes, the huge round beefy ones you see for $3/lb. at the store. The next two plants back are “Health Kick” tomatoes, which are low-to-the-ground Italian style tomatoes—long and dry, good for stuff like guacamole. Behind the tomatoes are four cucumber plants, which are going apeshit and climbing the ladders I built for them at the rate of about 6″/day. Each plant is throwing off blooms like crazy, and they have about 20 fruit between the three of them. Behind the cukes are four forlorn soybean plants, the ones the squirrels didn’t dig up. We had dreams of growing our own edamame, but obviously the yard critters love Japanese food as well. (that freaky cat statue is supposed to be some kind of deterrent, but I think it’s mainly serving as a perch for the local bird population, who seem to like to poop on its head.) Finally, in the far corner, we have two tomato plants grown from seed in our basement, which are finally coming into their own and putting off fruit.

Yesterday I made some hummus and we had cucumber-tomato-hummus sandwiches for dinner. While it wasn’t the most filling thing we could have eaten, it sure was tasty.