Garden Surprises

This sunflower called to us from the long-neglected garden, demanding to be admired. To get to it, Paul and I had to hack our way through a web of bind-weed, an annoyingly sharp and stinging weed that had invaded our garden. But the pain of pulling it out was worth it, since we also found that the four tomato plants, two pumpkin plants and two cucumber plants we put in the ground a month ago were not only healthy but actually bearing fruit.

Later, Paul and his friends braved the heat (it's been the hottest June on record!) to play outside and found a thicket of ripe sweet berries back in the "lower field." They picked for a good forty-five minutes, coming back inside sweaty and red-faced, but triumphantly carrying two good sized bowls of berries. Paul said that at camp last year they had called them "wine berries"; Ben and I recognized them as the red raspberries, which we had planted twenty-some years ago when we first moved here. Last year when we checked, there weren't enough berries to bother fussing with, but clearly this year they have rallied! We're glad the boys found them.