When there’s a heat wave and the fridge is full of garden produce dinner uses what’s at hand, what’s quick and doesn’t require the oven. The thumbnail shows the prepped vegetables which represent what was the week’s harvest. The luscious Reed avocado was from garden friends down the street.

Buried under the veggies is a warmed corn tortilla and refried black beans and jack cheese. I drizzled olive oil and lime juice over a mixture of chopped bell peppers and red onion. A generous dousing with lime juice before serving brightened all the flavors.

Here are the last of the tomatoes—’Early Girl’ and ‘San Francisco Fog’. The diseased tomato plants went to the green bin over the weekend so that bed will now be prepped for cool season crops.

Here’s some of the cut-and-come-again romaine lettuce I grew in a 12-inch container in mostly shade. With 90 degree temperature expected yesterday I did the second cutting to capture the goodness for last night’s dinner before it bolted.

The waning zucchini plants still produce a couple small zucchinis every other day. I remove the powdery mildewed foliage and the plants look reasonably good. The quality of the fruit is definitely less that mid-season but all is welcomed as the season closes.

Several months ago we refrigerated the best of the remaining navel oranges for snacks and fruit salads. It was time to juice the remainder which was a sweet treat at this time of year since we don’t have access to Valencia oranges.

When the thirty year old ‘Gordon’ apple tree makes only one apple, it is a very large one. Neighbors removed their apple tree which was likely the needed pollinator and we only get a few apples most years. In January, we’ll replace it with a small stone fruit tree.

A few stalks of rhubarb, our apples and frozen blueberries made a delectable fruit crisp.

In another month we’ll have the second crop of ‘Dorsett Golden’ apples. It appears as heavy as the late spring crop so more apple desserts and applesauce ahead.

Next week when the harvests are thin I’ll get to story of the strawberry guavas.

I have three small bouquets of zinnias in the house now knowing that later today they’ll be removed. You can see the humble, late-season zinnia bouquets at Farewell to Zinnias.

You may enjoy seeing what other garden bloggers harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

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