First of all, did you know that tomorrow is Mead Day? I didn’t either until today! Apparently it falls on the first Saturday in August, and Adventures in Homebrewing is having a great sale on mead brewing supplies. Time to get your mead making on!

The time of year has come where all we feel like we’re doing is waiting for blackberries to ripen! It’s been hot, really hot actually, but our garden is still holding up pretty well. We assess the blackberries literally every day, discussing what we will make with them. Cobbler, probably, with vanilla ice cream of course, as that’s what my Mom used to always make. Blackberry mead of course, and if we have enough, which we just might, jam is definitely third in line. But for now we just keep taste testing and waiting for all the red ones to turn black!

All of the squash in the garden are coming along quite nicely. Remember that spaghetti squash that was hanging down through the deer fencing in last weeks updates? It was getting really heavy and I was worried it was going to break off the vine, so Joel made it a little sling. Yes, we baby our growing veggies!

We found another squash growing in the permaculture swale bed that is the same shape as the other spaghetti squashes, but is a lot more green and stripy. Not quite sure what it is, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

We harvested our first bunch of green and yellow zucchini as well. Can’t wait for more! I know that sometimes zucchini can get out of hand, but I actually love having tons of veggies and trying to figure out what to do with them. Fermenting is always an option, or drying them in a dehydrator.

Our tomatoes are all still pretty green, but soon we will be in the [amazon text=San Marzano&asin=http://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Change-Certified-Organic-Marzano/dp/B000TYOFE4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8%26qid=1438320154%26sr=8-1%26keywords=san+marzano+seeds] money.

And also [amazon text=Mortgage Lifters&asin=http://www.amazon.com/Mortgage-Lifter-Tomato-Halladays-Seeds/dp/B00XJIGU2C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8%26qid=1438320823%26sr=8-4%26keywords=mortgage+lifter+tomato], with a cute Cosmo the Kitten hiding in the background. We’ve been letting him outside more and more and he absolutely loves to lounge around the garden!

The lemon balm and the basil have gone to flower, which is fine with me because they’re bringing in a lot of bees. The bees are also still going absolutely crazy over the lavender, and I know that they are secretly making lavender honey in a hidden away spot that I will never find!

The black eyed susan has also sprung up many flowers and I’m really enjoying it! The property down the way has a field that is completely covered with them and queen anne’s lace and it’s absolutely gorgeous. I’m going to try and get down there this week to take a photo if I can.

We’re doing a pretty good job of drying and saving up our medicinal herbs, although there are still many more I’d like to add. You can never have enough!

We have only a little bit of dried mullein leaf, so I’d like to expand that and maybe get some flowers as well. We have more lavender drying to fill up that jar, and I’d also like to get a bit more yarrow and comfrey drying. These herbs will be so great to have over the winter when our growing and foraging becomes minimal.

That’s about it from our homebody week in the garden! Hope you all have had a lovely week yourselves. One thing to think about as you go into the weekend: I know it seems soon, but it’s getting to be time to start thinking about your fall garden. Crazy, I know!