This is one of my favorite posts to write: reflections from my boys.

JUDE, AGE 8

1.What were your favorite vegetables to grow? My favorite things were my kohlrabi – just the taste of it. Also, sungold tomatoes, since I just had one, so good! Cucumbers were possibly my favorite things to have because they grow a lot of things. Look at a cucumber one day. Go on a vacation for a week and it’s about a foot long.

2.What do you want to do next year? Next time I’ll do corn again. Corn grows huge. From a small seed to one of the biggest veggies. Maybe sunflowers, too.

REX, AGE 10

1.What were your favorites? I haven’t picked my chillis yet…Basil, and cucumbers and chives grew well. Onions didn’t cuz Jude ripped them out. Baseball kept me busy, so I wasn’t as into my garden this year.

2.Next year? Same.

MORRIS, AGE 5

1.What were your favorites? Getting peppers and growing carrots and green beans. I like picking the peppers cuz I knew what would be. I liked carrots cuz when you pull them out you see what’s growing.

2.Next year? I want to grow onions cuz they’re fun to get out of the ground.

The tomatoes keep ripening. An explosion of red and gold color the garden. Jude has taken to gobbling up his sun-golds.

The kale keeps coming. I harvest so many leaves, I’m not sure what to do with all of them. I give some to niece Jojo, who loves kale. I freeze some for winter soups. And, I chop some for Friday night pizza.

Morris’s banana peppers keep on coming. He loves that he gets to pick one every time he visits his garden.

There’s still cauliflower to pick, some broccoli sprouts I can cut, and green beans lingering…

Last season I thought about succession planting; I loved the idea of extending the growing season. However, I have so many vegetables still coming, I’m calling it good.

…although Rex did a lot of growing in the spring, before we planted. I knew he was going through a spurt then because he was napping a lot after school, something uncharacteristic of my Rex. So, no inches added to his height of 59.5 inches (although Ty told me my early summer calculations might have been inaccurate). 🙂

Jude grew a half inch taller this summer (now 60 inches), as did Morris (now 46 inches). But Morris’s shoe size expanded by an inch and a half! I could hardly believe it when he showed me that his new tennis shoes from the end of the school year didn’t fit anymore.