How does your garden grow?
The vegetable garden is looking very promising this year, despite my one month delay in planting this spring. Ever dependable cucumbers are sprawling and setting fruit, and two out of three sweet potato plants (this year’s latest experiment) are spreading vines in all directions. The tomatoes are flourishing in 5 gallon bucket pots, the only way I have found to grow them successfully in our harsh clay soil. Thanks, Landon, for cutting the bottoms out of the buckets!
This year I tried three different varieties of the ‘Boy” tomato plants, and all of them are large and setting fruit. I miss having a Brandywine plant, my favorite flavored tomato, but the smaller fruit of the ‘Better Boy’ plants have avoided bug and animal damage much better for several years in a row. I’m hoping for a few more than five tomatoes this year, since we no longer have tomato-snatching chickens around. They went to live on a friend’s acreage earlier this year.
Last month young rhubarb plants were large enough for a small harvest. Daniel and I made a small crisp, which received very good comments from the family food connoisseurs. Grapes vines are another experiment I began last spring, when I planted three bare root plants. One thriving plant is twice as big as the others and now has a few grape clusters hidden among the leaves. 
Not to be outdone by the culinary garden, the summer flowers are in their finest.
Coneflowers and sedum:
This little flower was a surprise-I planted a whole package of bachelor’s buttons in spring, but didn’t see any of the plants come up.
Stargazer lilies:
A red peony from earlier in the summer:
Miniature lamb’s ears and balloon flowers:
Everything looks splendid, Sarah.