Last dispatch from summer.

The summer garden was pretty good. The peas came up beautifully - full of flowers and fruit. And for a couple of weeks, my kids were picking and eating food out of the garden. Picking! Eating! Bliss! A glorious miracle, as any mother of picky eaters will tell you. The carrots were too crowded (lesson learned), no-one likes radishes (lesson learned) and the pumpkin never quite.... grew a pumpkin. Lesson totally Not learned, vine, flowers, I have no idea what happened.

The absolute stand-out super-star of the summer garden? Volunteer tomatoes. The Volunteers are now a five foot by five foot tomato patch that yields a colander-full every other day. Caprese salad is awesome. Homemade salsa is awesome. Roasted tomatoes with sausage is awesome. I picked tomatoes yesterday. It's October 23rd. It's awesome.

Some very helpful gardeners have mentioned that you're supposed to take the seeds out of the compost pile and to them I say: Want some tomatoes?