Pain and Wonder

Last night I canned some fantastic salsa from a recipe on GardenWeb. My neighbor laughed at me. She could funnel salsa all day long whereas I don't usually touch it, but I've come to realize I don't like my salsa cold. I like it heated through and this salsa when heated to cook was good. Fantastic at that, but whereas I had some of the ingredients from the garden, I had to supplement. I canned it, it worked amazingly well and now it's sitting its purdy self on my shelf. Hopefully when I open a can in a month or two it won't kill us all, for this could end up being "The Coroner's Yard," yet.

Note to self...your hands may have stopped burning quite some time ago from the capsicum in the peppers you cut for the salsa, but that means nothing to your eyeballs when you go to take out your contacts or even put them in the next morning. And yes, the hottest pepper I cut was a little jalapeno. Yes, I'm a wuss; yes, I've been told it before. I still say peppers smell badly, but I've got respect for them now.

Today, I just HAD to find something to do with that gargantuan zucchini. We've got tons sliced and shredded in the freezer, we're not relish eaters, and I know that it's not safe to can zucchini without a pressure canner, which I'm not interested in. But, what I could do is make some zucchini salsa and freeze it! Yay, more salsa!!

You'd think I'd remember to wear gloves, this being less than 5 hours removed from the morning contact experience.

Yeah, me too. But anyway, I made the salsa, got rid of the Goliath zucchini and two of his friends, but the recipe called for nutmeg. I'm not a big nutmeg fan, but I put a bit in. It's not as good as the one I made last night, but it's something new, the zucchini is used, and it's in the freezer.

Harvests are getting smaller. Here's today's. The bush cucumbers over in the large bed are going to get pulled out tomorrow. They've produced one cucumber to the same seeds in the side bed's 20 lbs. They're dying back, have no new blooms and just not worth the water. I still have a few on the vining cucumbers to last the month.

I put the tomatoes on the counter to use for tomorrow's picnic, but I took the red chilies and strung them together to dry.

I hung them in my cabinet in the dark to try to maintain their color, but I've got no idea what to do with them. Seriously, I'll never use them in anything and my new found respect for a measly jalapeno is not helping me look at these things favorably.

But on from the pain to the wonder....

There's just something cute about a baby cantaloupe. There's not much more in the garden which could possibly be cuter.

Except a baby watermelon. Smile for the camera, baby watermelon!

Awww.

Now grow, darn you, grow!

The morning comes early, but I'm still stalling since I'm afraid to take my contacts out. Sweet gardening dreams.