Puppies and Garden Update

We've been away for a while. There's been a few reasons for that: Melissa has written a lot at work and hasn't felt up to writing at home and I had been busy catching up on the Tour de France nightly.

Since we've missed a few weeks of blogging, I figured it would be a good time for an update before we get into some recipe posts soon.

A few weeks ago, we got both of our Westie puppies groomed. Here they are after a lunchtime play session. Dezzy is resting in the foreground while Ollie is chasing his tail in the background.

And here's a photo from this weekend when they were both tuckered out, resting in front of our fireplace.

Now, on to the garden. If there's one word to describe our garden (and our gardening efforts) this year, it's resilient.

We've not skated by without difficulties. To start with, our tomato plants were infested with early blight. Melissa trimmed all six of our tomato plants and they had been healthy until Melissa saw more blight on them yesterday. Then our container basil plant was viciously attacked by Japanese beetles, but a trap has kept them away since. And last, just this past weekend, our cucumber plants were infested by cucumber beetles. Melissa put tin foil on the ground around the roots so the sun reflects and keeps any larvae away.

Before the cucumber problems, we were able to harvest a couple, but the stars of our garden this year have been our pepper plants and our zucchini plant (Exhibit A below).

What have you been up to lately, gardening or otherwise?