I have no words. Just...go there now.

Man oh man, do I have tomatoes. I've got tomatoes coming out of not only my ears, but every other available office. Seriously. I brought in two big bowls today (forced some on a neighbor) and there are probably as many still out there as there are inside. Cripes! I've run out of freezer containers and I still have a mountain of green beans (from a poorly advised but *very* productive trip to the farmer's market this morning) to freeze, not to mention apples that I want to turn into applesauce. Oh-and a big bunch of basil that's marked for pesto. I'm bound and determined to fill that freezer before the frost comes and all the vegetables get funky and expensive. That means I'm going to have to get crackin'. I'm just discovering that *some* foods (yeah corn, I"m talking to you) are very time intensive for not much result. A dozen ears got me two small packages of corn in the freezer. A dozen peppers had the yield one would *expect* from a dozen peppers. Peppers are honest vegetables. And tomatoes- also straight up in the "amount brought in vs. amount in the freezer" category. Green beans don't fib either. Just the corn- big old, bald-faced, tass-ely, lying corn. But the lure of the corn...the memory of the yummy, yellow-and-white like summer sunshine flavor, the look on people's faces when they say "You froze corn? I didn't know you could do that," all seduce me back to the farm stand with its Dozen Ears for $2 promises and it's pretty baskets filled with fresh-from-the-field goodness. Oh corn, I'm powerless where you're concerned.

I'm so ashamed.

Remember when I started all those seedlings back in March? Remember the trauma of hardening off, the tragic loss of nearly all the petunias to dampening off? Well baby, it's Graduation Day! Check out this harvest-


just a small piece of the 50+ tomatoes waiting for me outside. Thanks to TMOTH, my new freezer is humming away in the basement, just a-waitin' for the harvest-y goodness to come. I've got four packages of salsa already made up (but I have to get a good jalapeno to finish it), I've got a dozen ears of corn to cook and freeze (as soon as I get Grandma to tell me how), I've got strawberries for jam (thanks to the Buy one Get one at Shaws). I'm going to make tomato puree for chili this winter, I'm going to freeze green and red peppers while they're wicked cheap at the farm stand. And I'm going to puree carrots to slip into the spaghetti sauce which I'm *also* going to make. (The only way the kids will eat carrots that aren't peeled and packaged in a little plastic bag. Real carrots like the ones in the picture actually *frighten* them.)

My sister pointed out that buying a freezer is a seriously grown up thing to do. I guess she's right, but you know what? I think this must be how it feels when TMOTH gets a new power tool. This freakin' ROCKS.