Self Serve?

 Ok, so Hunter is a fussy eater.  I fill his bowl with kibble in the morning and top it with a few small pieces of cheese and a veggie that if left until later won't get too disgusting.  Typically, he eats the people food toppings and leaves the kibble.  (It doesn't matter what kind of kibble; he dislikes them all equally.)  He tries to mooch people food all day and feigns starvation.  He has plenty of dog food; he's just too stubborn to eat it until I coat it with something yummy like cooked, chopped or ground meat for supper.  While the glut of tomatoes from dad's garden is ripening, some of the totes are resting on the floor.  Earlier today, he must have helped himself to a tomato, because we found a puddle of juice and seeds on the floor.  The rest of the big mama simply disappeared.  I've had to cover the top of the tote where he can reach to prevent him repeating his self serve habit again.  If he wants a tomato, he's going to have to beg for it.  I wonder how many he stole before and managed to eat and lick up the evidence.  One thing for sure, he's not going to be constipated tomorrow.

Reaping What Was Sown

Nope, not politics.  This is all about the garden.

An attempt was made by Duke to hatch a few tomatoes.

Since they were under a towel, he was unable to knock them off the counter, but his chubby behind did manage to pop some of the cherry tomatoes on which he sat.

One weekend's endeavors included marinara sauce, tomato juice, rhubarb juice, beans.  Also shown are the last 3 jars of jelly from the previous week's 4 batches made when berries were cleaned out of the freezer.  Turning the berries into canned jelly merely stalled the filling of the freezer and the inevitable need to switch to canning beans, rather than freezing them.

The next weekend saw the making of tomato soup kits,

canned tomatoes

and you guessed it more beans.

Thankfully the beans have slowed way down.  All the tomatoes were picked at my house and at dad's place.  The green ones are safely indoors away from cold nights, and are ripening at a pace that will require more canning around the middle of next week.  Dad started the summer with the comment, "I'll just plant a few tomatoes.  You can have what I am unable to eat."  Good intentions were swamped by the joy of watching things grow.  My cousin gave him three plants after the family reunion, and he came home and started an entire packet of Burpee Big Mama tomato seeds when the ones he had planted directly in the garden were eaten by rabbits.  About half of the seedlings went into his garden and the others were planted elsewhere where they didn't cause too much trouble.  When we finished picking his tomatoes, there were approximately a half bushel of ripening ones, and another 3 1/2 bushels of green ones.  My garden has hit the scraggly messy stage; the sunflowers are done blooming.  I will give the birds a few more days to strip all the sunflower seeds from the plants before cutting them down and composting the stalks.

The squash have already been harvested, but the pumpkins are still plugging along, ripening ever so slowly.  That's the hazard of planting a variety that grows better in the south of France.  Wisconsin just doesn't really have a 110-120 day growing season.  They'll have to be picked soon before we get a hard frost, then allowed to finish ripening in the house.  Aside from a few cold nights in the high 30's and low 40's that prompted picking all the tomatoes, the weather has been remarkably warm for a Wisconsin fall.  Saturday the temperature is supposed to get up to 72, but then it will return to more normal levels.

Hunter is sniffing the pumpkin.  He's a weird dog.  Unlike Chloe and Ember, he likes a lot of vegetables.  He gladly eats cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, beets, turnips, squash, pumpkin, and apples.  He can be quite a pest begging for produce as it is prepared for freezing or canning.  He's always demanding his "cut".  If he could talk, he'd have an Italian accent and want to be called Don Hunter.  There must be something about carrots though, just like Chloe and Ember, he won't touch them.