Gardeners Gone Wild

It's that time of summer when all the nurturing and care and weeding of the vegetable garden is starting to pay off.

Holy shit, is it ever!!

I came home from work last night with new Mason jars, ready to start canning my beets. Old Sarge is already out in the garden building Tomato Condos. All you can see of him are his shoulders and his little bald head- the rest looks like the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Damn things have pulled their cages right out of the ground! So OS is framing in new homes for the tomatoes to rest their heavy branches on.

It's a sickness, I tell you. Think ya used enough fertilizer there, Butch? And now the green beans are ready for the first picking too. And they are loaded. I think I will be sporting scalded hands and forearms for a few weeks by the looks of things.
For anyone who is interested in canning, and I'm sure that's EXACTLY why anyone stops by here, I pressure canned half my beets and heat packed the other half. Only one jar out of each batch did not seal, but the color in the jars that were heat packed was much darker. Pressure cooking seemed to leech the rich redness out of the beets for some reason and they don't look as tasty.

One question for all those who live in my neck of the woods: have you seen any roadside stands for sweet corn? Here it is past the 4th of July, and where there usually would be at least four places on the way home to stop for corn, there are none. Maybe I've just got my time messed up, but it seems odd. Tammi? T1G? Contagion?