Crazy garden year

The front yard looked like mostly garden this year, with tomatoes and a beanpole and zucchini and squash that tried to take over, and sunflowers and waves of different kinds of flowers that despite the efforts of my better half I have never mastered the names of. OK, I can worry out which are the roses--and we still have some blossoms, frost-wilted though they are. And last weekend there was one last strawberry. The birds loved the sunflowers. And the rabbits weren't phased by the gladiolas (or whatever they were--the beasts allegedly don't like the smell).

Some things grew strong all the way into November, but we must have lost 20 pounds of cherry tomatoes that never ripened enough to pick--they stayed hard and green for months. (And for some reason some of the small tomatoes tasted vile; but others on the same plant were delicious. By their fruits you will ... um ...) The hot peppers finally made their red crown above the green, and those we didn't give away are now drying in the kitchen.