Colors in the garden

During this time of the summer, the garden is having a rough time.  The heat coupled with insect pressure is a very effective knock-out punch on gardening.  The tomato vines have been pulled up and composted and right now we're basically waiting until around October to put the fall garden in.  We're still harvesting a lot of okra, basil, baby lima beans, and lots of peppers, including jalapeno, banana, poblano, criolla sella, yellow bell, chocolate bell and Vietnamese 5 color hot peppers, which are especially pretty:

As you can see, I have some weeding to do!  The foot and a half of rain we've had in the last 2 1/2 weeks has really gotten the weeds growing.  That's okay.  The grass in the pasture is growing and the cows are thrilled.  They are fat and happy and we've seen an increase in the amount of cream they are making.

I took a picture of this plant in the garden as well:

I really don't know what it is, but it is one of the plants that was included in the mesclun mix of salad greens that I planted last fall.  It is flowering now and the blue flowers brighten up an otherwise boring plot of land.  Odd for me to say that as I'm not much of a flower gardener.  I like things you can eat!  Speaking of that, the vines you see growing with the heart shaped leaves are sweet potatoes.  You can see evidence of the bug pressue on a lot of the leaves.

Three or four years ago, we composed some sweet potatoes in the garden and they come up volunteer every year.  That is a blessing!  No planting - they just come up year after year.  Gradually, the vines will take up the entire garden.  Around October we'll dig up the garden and harvest a bushel or so of sweet potatoes that we cure and eat on for a while.  We love sweet potato fries.  Baked sweet potato with butter is delicious.  We've even gotten to where we do a North Louisiana thing and put a big dollop of it in chicken and sausage gumbo.  It's not only us that enjoy them, either.  Daisy, Rosie and the rest of the cow family will gather along the side of the fence when we harvest.  They absolutely LOVE to eat sweet potato vines/leaves.

Sometimes, it is easy to get discouraged by difficulties that come our way in our day to day lives.  It's the little things in life like this that we can be thankful for.  Things we didn't plant, things we didn't work for, things we didn't expect, suddenly bless us - and not only us, but our animals, too.  God is good!