The garden harvests are thin when I lead with rhubarb, though admittedly the stalks were exceptionally long and high quality. Much of the garden has gone on hiatus with our ten day heat wave.

Two blocks from the ocean we’ve been in the 80’s and low 90’s with near matching humidity. Thankfully, Hurricane Kay, now a tropical storm dissipates, leaving only the remnant humidity. Bands of rain from the storm provided 0.6 inches of gentle precipitation which was welcome and unusual this early in September. Our rain tanks garnered about 400 gallons of water which will help when I begin planting the cool season garden later this month.

I used the rhubarb for a strawberry guava-rhubarb sauce. The guava crop has been a disappointment this season with much of the fruit dropping before turning the lovely deep red and developing full flavor. The majority of the fruit now goes to the compost bin since the unripe guavas make a lackluster puree. Mixed with the rhubarb compote the flavor deficit is not so noticeable, so I did process about four quarts of puree.

The garden highlight for last week was the shelling of the dried cranberry beans. It was a garden experiment and I only sowed one ounce of seed in a 1 foot x 3 foot area. The yield, though only 12 ounces, was high quality and I’ve saved enough seed to double the planting next year. More on the cranberry bean experiment in an upcoming post.

Though I long for garden lettuce, some purchased organic baby red butter lettuce made a perfect base for my garden additions—’Baby Belle’ peppers and beets from the spring harvest. Fresh SoCal sourdough bread and an exceptional ‘Early Girl’ tomato and more of the superb lettuce composed the first and maybe last BLT of the season.

Every flower in the bouquet on the left triggers a memory, especially the anemone from my sister’s garden. The ‘Queen Red Lime’ zinnias are terribly mildewed. Unless I can bury the stems in a larger bouquet, I just select a few and float in water.

I’ve recently added a new to page my website. Check Garden Tasks This Week. Then head over to see what other garden bloggers around the world harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Happy Acres blog.

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