These pictures from Vicky’s garden were taken June 21, 2009, the very first day of summer.

Bean Blossom

Just beginning to open, here is a closeup picture of a bean blossom. Somehow bean blossom is a much more satisfy description than bean flower.

Bean variety? These are Early Contender beans, Vicky’s favorite bean to plant ever since she first tried them years ago in Wisconsin. Seems like our first packet of this variety of bean seeds came from Gurney Seeds. We both like Early Contender, though some years Vicky may grow a few bean plants of a different variety just to see what happens.

Tiny Tomato

Although Vicky’s main tomato plants this year are Early Girl, I managed (without much trouble) to convince her to put in a cherry tomato plant, something I usually request.

Cherry tomatoes are just the right size for a snack in the garden, and when wandering the yard in summer they are quite good fresh off the plant. This closeup are of her Grape Tomatoes, think that’s the variety name. We are both looking forward to our first taste of these.

Not pictured, but we also have a yellow “lemon colored” tomato variety planted, just to see what it does and how it tastes.

Rhubarb Plant

Finally this year I decided to put in a rhubarb plant to replace the ones I had years ago. Here’s a picture of my new rhubarb plant, variety Canadian Red (or is it Canada Red?).  Why this variety? It is the only kind the nursery had.

What is rhubarb? It’s a plant that comes back every year, or at least it is supposed to. The “stalks” are used to make pie, sauce, or muffins, but mainly rhubarb sauce is the reason I wanted a rhubarb plant. It is also known as pie plant.

Rhubarb is mighty sour, but with enough sugar it makes a great sauce, and it is something my Mom made when I was a kid. Got an email from my Mom a couple days back, and she had another nice rhubarb harvest and had made sauce and muffins the day she emailed me.

Rhubarb is available at grocery stores in the spring, but it is always (to me) too old and soft looking, and overpriced, at least that’s my opinion.

We are hoping for many years of rhubarb from this plant, but no harvests till next year. The first year a person is just supposed to let it grow.

Given time, it should create new baby rhubarb plants. Hope it does well.