The garden in harvest season

Some of you have noticed our scary zucchini vine.
I was a little concerned about it myself.
I mean, nobody really loves zucchini, right?
And this one is pretty intimidating.

Until, that is, I came home one day and M. had prepared this soup.
This glorious, savory soup.
This zucchini soup.
I will never turn my nose up at a melon-sized zucchini again.
Yes, the herbs are all from our gardens as well - thyme, mint and lavendar.
We are not gardeners.
I've said it before.
There's just something in the soil around here...


Only one of these came up...but it was a good one! It looked even prettier than the one on the seed packet! And it's ours.

Also from a seed packet.

We're not even sure where these came from. Nobody remembers planting cherry tomatoes...and yet we have them in both front and back gardens. Curiouser and curiouser...

This was from a wonderful high-altitude wildflower mix I got at Denver's Seed Company before it moved.

A couple of totally gratuitous pictures of Flynn on the lawn...just because she's so darned cute. The thing you can't really tell from the pictures is how little that face is. She's so miniature! It just kills me. I mean, how does she go from so small to adult-sized? How does that happen??
I can't stop myself from touching those cheeks every five minutes. She is the most insanely adorable thing I've ever laid eyes on in my life. We didn't grow her in Colorado soil...but she'll be Colorado-raised!

Aaaaaaaaaargh! Can you stand it? I can't. She. Is. Adorable.

One of the fruits of our triumphant (and also rather scary) pumpkin vine. I caught it trying to cross the road the other day. I think it was going for the neighbors. Actually, I think it might have eaten one or two of the neighbors.

On the plus side, if we don't find the time to take QQ to the pumpkin patch this year (which is altogether possible, as busy as this month is looking for us) we'll have one right here at home! At least she won't miss out on her first pumpkin patch.

Thanks to the unusual August rains...the second bloom this season of our favorite sunset-colored roses, which were the first to bloom in the spring! Ah, luxury.

Some sort of bean.

We still haven't identified it. QQ is as stumped as the rest of us. But it had pretty flowers!

The most perfect flower.

My beloved chocolate mint. And in bloom, to boot. Mmmmmmmm.

Fall flowers planted by LaoLao.

Flynn and her dad inspect one of the tomato beds.

It's a bumper crop.

Seriously. I hope she's not planning on getting any cuter. I might spontaneously combust.

Ahhhhh, the bounty of summer!

And look at that...we even got a second batch of strawberries this year! Totally unexpected.

Sigh. Lovely.

Who grew all this stuff? Couldn't have been us. We weren't even paying attention.