Garden Bounty

We are back to our Sunday ritual of garden work. Get up to watch CBS Sunday Morning, then it is straight out to the garden to work before it gets too hot. Yesterday, Gracie followed me up there (the vegetable garden is about 150 yards from the house). She hung around the entire time we worked.

She doesn't look very happy, does she?
We had our first good harvest of a variety of vegetables. Carrots (disappointingly not sweet), kale, lettuce, turnips, the last of the radishes and a couple of onions.

I forgot to mention peas. My snap peas are still in the flat sno pea stage, my favorite. I love to eat them raw. The deer left enough so we got several batches of nice, small, crunchy ones.
I also picked young pinto beans - the ones that look like green beans. I am afraid there won't be any left by the time they plump up and the shells turn brown. That is the stage when you pick them to shell. Last year the deer ate them all before we got to them.

Here's my harvest laid out on the kitchen counter after washing. This is the part I dislike the most about the whole gardening experience. Well, okay, I don't like weeding when the temperature gets over 90. But the cleaning process is a huge chore. First you have to trim off all the foliage and roots. It takes at least 2 washes to get the dirt, and perhaps insects, off, then to get them fully clean. It can take over an hour. James has an old sink set up at the garden. I need to get it cleaned off. We currently use it as a work bench. Then I can at least get the first, muddy rinse done outside before I bring it all in to the kitchen. At least I have lots of counter space to spread out the bountiful harvest to dry.