cilantro & lime bean salad WITH TOMATOES!

I think I'm turning into a tomato. We have HUNDREDS of yellow flowers speckling our plants so I know we're really going to be inundated in no time, but I've already been eating handfuls of cherry tomatoes (and a couple big ones) each day! Ayayay! I finally had the heart to use one in a recipe and not just enjoy it out-of-hand with a couple cranks of fresh pepper.

In this bowl: 3 tomatoes, 2 avocados covered with 4 tablespoons lime juice, 1/3 cup chopped cilantro, 1/4 cup chopped basil, 2 cups black beans, 2 cups corn, 1/2 cup scallion, shallot or early onion (plus the green part), sea salt, pepper, 1/2-1 tsp. evaporated cane sugar, and a glug of olive oil.

P.S. On an entirely unrelated note: I just love this.

first squash of summer

I'm a bit worried about these heirloom squash. By midday the entire plant droops in the heat. The tips of the leaves seem burnt and yellowed... I think I'm going to try to stick it in partial shade now that we're in the upper-nineties and lower-100s (sob!).

P.S. This guy was delicious. Sauteed in a little olive oil with an early onion, topped with homemade pesto from our first summer harvest. Simple; good flava.

first knobby heirloom, picked in the early a.m.

I'll let you know how it tastes!

P.S. Absolutely delicious. Excellent flavor - a tad too watery. Either I'm over-squirting or I picked it slightly too late. Hmm. Well, I have 7 (!) flower-speckled-tomato-plants-worth-of-time to figure it out.

warm harvest in the early-evening sun

Tonight I popped into the garden with big lettuce leaves for my two wandering tortugas. I spent a few minutes pinching flowers off the basil, picking a few more cherries and yanking up big bunches of carrots that I whanged against the sides of the horse trough to shake off the dirt with gusto.

Evening sun on drying clothes - what textures!

And later still, I lazed on the hard flagstone beneath two Queen palms and finished my book (sort of nice, but irritatingly syrupy, FYI - 2D characters, implausible sequences of events and sheesh! enough with the similes! After my extremely short dip into fiction, I'm galloping back to reality.).

first peek: heirloom crookneck summer squash

what sung of August, now sings of May!

first garden onions, in my tummy

A simple supper: bed of quinoa mixed with homemade pesto from mid-April harvest. Topped with sauteed onion, 5 blanched green beans (from garden pot!), a couple handfuls of peas (dug from freezer depths) & bound together with a double-yolked egg (!) whisked with a half cup of garden herbs (sage, parsley, basil).