Fruit Fullness

Late August in Chicago: a time of year for sweltering hot days and sleepless, sweaty nights. But, not this year. It's been abnormally cool this season and because of this, our harvests have been behind schedule. In 2008 and 2007, our largest harvests were in the middle of the August and by the end of the month the numbers had taken their inevitable downturn towards fall.

But not this year! Saturday we summed up to 130 lbs! Quite an jump from last week. What was the difference? Well, the single biggest crop was tomatoes!

Look at those lovelies:


Just as we were weighing the tomatoes, Alan ran up with an enormous last minute tom, pushing the total weight from 48 to 49 lbs. That makes a lot of BLTs.

For this gardener though, the most exciting harvest this week was fruit. For the first time we've gotten a significant harvest of apples, we also pulled in a few of our plums, and snipped bunches of grapes.

Rummaging around for grapes:


Doug handpicks the ripest plums:


Lest you think we're past our prime this summer, just you wait. We're anticipating the harvest of more plums, pears, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins. And there's still plenty of tomatoes and peppers on the plants.

Lots of thanks to the good people at Entertainment Cruises for showing up and chipping in to help. Great folks and hard workers!