The semester is off to a good start! My class is really interested and engaged, so I'm always excited to teach.

But I think it's about time for a garden update! We have had some successes and some not so great successes in our garden this year: in previous posts, for example, I posted some very nice pictures of homegrown corn, but because of uneven shade, it was rather poorly fertilized, and we left it on the cob a bit too long and it was a bit starchy. Our tomatoes were also hit with blight: we planted about 13 in the garden and five in the front yard, and between the blight and the people who mow our yard we are down to one in the front and three in the back. But the ones in back are about to start giving us tomatoes again, and we found a volunteer in the front that we think is from last year's cherry tomatoes.

Here's the coming tomato in the back:



And here is our volunteer, who has totally engulfed our pretty flowers:



At the same time, we have lots of good things happening now. Our pepper plants have started to yield some beautiful peppers:



And judging from the amount of flowers they have, we're in for a lot more:



Our leeks are very healthy:




Our collard greens seem very happy:



And best of all, one of our new raspberry plants is miraculously overburdened with at least 75 berries. Needless to say, we're very excited about this!



Also, after ripping out the corn, we had lots of room to start some new things for the fall. It's always exciting to see new plants, and I'm having a lot of fun encouraging our new beans and peas: