Abbondanza!! Part 2

Let me preface this by saying I have never gardened before this summer. I have killed unkillable mint plants. I have nursed potted cilantro past when it should have been eaten. I have watched beloved herbs die in beautiful terraced pots. On and off in my life, I have loved the IDEA of gardening, but have never been motivated to action. I have known people whose idea of a good weekend is to re-pot fifty baby tomato sprouts from peat pots to larger pots. I have not joined those people in their dirty idea of fun.

I now know that I just needed to find my soulmate in order to appreciate all the joy that sinking your hands into nature and cultivating living things brings me. Now that we are mid-July, I realize that it's mid summer. School will begin again in six or seven weeks. We'll have the garden until mid-October, but I know that one day too soon I'll be kicking myself for taking this kind of abundance for granted. After all of our time hacking at the dirt, getting eaten by chiggers, weeding, crying for rain, and getting sunburned just above where my waistband, today yielded our first real recolte. Because of the dry spell and the multiplying weeds casting our fledgling onions in shade, we harvested quite a few of our baby yellow onions.

We also got a nice haul of tomatoes (17 early girls, 8 romas, 15 cherry), tomatillos, some of our struggling cucumbers, and we pulled up one of the celery plants to give the others a little more breathing room. It's just astonishing to me that we've gone for weeks without purchasing a significant amount of tomatoes in a grocery store.
I also cut some of the mint and basil that's flowering . From L to R, thai basil, sweet basil, spearmint, and the surreptitious cinnamon basil (I thought it was thai basil until I realized it smelled totally different! The nursery got it wrong!)(That same nursery also sold us some cabbage that has turned out to be cauliflower!) I've been looking up how to freeze herbs (rather than dry them)-- I'll try it and provide the link if I like the results.
Here Mini scrutinizes the sweet basil... she approves!
Oh, and our neighboring gardeners who gave us celtuce last week graced us with three beautiful chinese cucumbers, each as long as my forearm!
It's going to be a happy time making arabic salad, maybe tabouleh, and even pickled cucumbers, all from non-store-bought produce. I can begin to understand those foodies who won't eat tomatoes out of season.

As long as they're in season, and I have good french bread and fresh mozzerella handy, Zipper's caprese panino will always be on the menu.