A Midsummer Garden Update

  Before our daily visit to the garden, we re-visited the rules one more time, when do we pick tomatoes? When they are red. Do we pick green tomatoes? No we do not. Do we pick orange tomatoes? No sir. But despite knowing our colors and going over the rules,  this concept is challenging and has resulted in more than one tomato picked before its time.
  Luckily for Layla we finally had a handful ready for the pickin’. And pick we did.
We got one big guy and a handful of grape tomatoes that were sweet and delicious. We each ate one right away, Layla bit into it and immediately spit it out, but it's a start...  And the rest went into the salad. Yum. We were spared from the hail storm a couple weeks ago and hopefully our luck will continue and we’ll be enjoying garden tomatoes all summer long.
  On a sadder note, the peppers, not doing so hot, the birds get the strawberries before they are ripe and the poor basil. He’s our third basil plant of the year, Basil the III, I’ve named him. Basil should be easy but somehow I have the toughest time keeping it alive. If anyone out there can help me, let me know. Hopefully this one can pull through, I really want to make pesto but can't bring myself to buy basil at the grocery store!
  Despite our gardening failures, our squash and zucchini are growing like weeds and there are plenty of green 'maters growing every day just like our little girl.