finally a full bowl

of cherry tomatoes! Just when the plants look about dead.

I might get a few nice broccoli heads though, especially if we have a long autumn season. You can tell it is too cold for caterpillars- newer leaves on my broccoli plants are so nice. The older foliage is completely in tatters.

We have eaten all the carrots- it was just two dinners' worth- and the green beans continue to be very slim pickings. I am thinking I will just not plant green beans next year- maybe whatever pest spreads this disease my plants will die out or move on. Bah.

I've hung soap to deter the deer. A friend told me they don't like the smell of 'irish spring' and it just so happens my husband uses that soap (I don't like it). I cut one soap bar into three chunks. Put each in a ziploc baggie with holes poked in the bottom (so smell would emit but enough rain stay out it doesn't dissolve quickly? that was my idea) and tied a string around the top. I hung one on my sad forsythia, another on a decor piece in the back garden (where a few plants look suspiciously bitten) and third in the garden right by the patch of swiss chard and beets. Whose tops had been getting nipped off by something. Now they appear to be growing more. Not sure if that's because weather is cooler, or because the forager is deterred- but just in case I'm leaving up the soap.