Do You Smell Something Burning?

The town has been in a haze of smoke for the last 2 days due to a wildfire in the region (and possibly from the fires further south in the province).  When I got up Saturday morning, I thought I was seeing thick fog outside the window.  Then I smelled the smoke and noticed the eerie yellow-orange tinge in the air.  The sun was a small, neon orange circle in the sky.  What a strange atmosphere.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but might show how much the smoke obscured the sun (this was taken around 11 o'clock in the morning).

One of the first cucumbers...

...and the Galeux D'Eysines are coming along well...

One of the ball dahlias has bloomed!  Pretty petals, and I love the colours.  

One of seven 4-lb bags of frozen raspberries in the freezer.  We also juiced several pounds so it would be easier to store, and so we can make jelly in the coming weeks, if we want.  We finally just stopped picking the raspberry bushes.  We have more than we need and simply could not find people willing to put in the time and effort to pick for themselves.  The berries on the bushes are small (end of season), very ripe, and are falling off the plants at this point.  I hate to see the fruit go to waste, but there is so much else for me to do, that something had to give.

I sold one bag of frozen berries last night and hope to sell a few more to make room in the freezer for the coming beans, peas, and tomato sauce.  If nothing else, it gives us a little grocery money for the hours of picking we've put in!

First ripe tomato of the season.  :)  This is a "Bonny Best", a small canning tomato.  One of the Cherokee Purples is also looking great.  All the rest of the tomatoes are still green (typical).

The marigolds were very late starting, but have finally found their legs.

We picked a few crabapples to juice as an experiment.  The juice is tart, but sweet enough to drink and can be used to make jelly.

Crabapple juice, still warm.  This one batch of crabapples produced 12 cups of juice.

Once chilled (or frozen), the crabapple juice takes on a soft pink colour.  This would make such a pretty jelly!

The first picking of Red Swan beans...

...and Galopka beans...

...and Calima beans.

Garlic rounds (Kiev) that grew from some of the bulbils planted last fall.  (The update is at the bottom of the page, here.)