In our Ontario garden

Bob prompted this blog. He wolfed down three helpings of our cucumber salad (see recipe on this web site), and asked me, “Are these our cucumbers?” I said they were, and that I had not bought cucumbers from the grocery store in weeks. With our assiduous watering, the garden has both blossomed in flowers, and borne us a bountiful crop of veggies this summer.

Aside from being part of the cucumber salad, we can incorporate and garnish dishes and drinks with fresh mint from our garden. This is mint julep time, and mojito season.  We have plenty of mint leaves. We have always grown our share of fresh herbs, including  chives for our baked potatoes and fish dishes; lots of lemon balm, which makes a nice tea when infused. The chopped leaves are good in salads too. We have enjoyed our garden-fresh heirloom tomatoes, especially with boconcini cheese along with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. It’s called a caprese salad in Italy. We also grow the basil that goes into the Caprese salad. It is called Perpetual Pesto basil.

Grandma came over to try our fresh Caribbean hot peppers. Bob says he does not need the gratuitous heartburn, and the so-called wiri-wiri peppers turned out to be blazing hot scotch bonnet peppers. The long, red-hot chili peppers came up short on heat, about the only thing in this scorching summer that did. They turned out to be little different than sweet peppers.

The Jamaican spinach growing in our garden is what we added to Swiss chard, and made a wonderful Indian Saag.

The eggplant is growing by the day, and it is going to be just huge. We’ll be reaping the first of our beans this early week in August. We have a small sweet potato and Irish crop each year. They will be ready to harvest later this month. Though not edible, unless you count steeping it in tea, the indoor jasmine plant has thrived outside on the patio this summer, and as this is written, the entire patio is fragrant with the aroma of jasmine.

The sunflowers are just starting to bloom, and all is well, content and peaceful in our Mississauga yard this summer.