This pace is brutal!

I told my son to get my leg in the shot for scale comparison (not quite knee high), Aug 2026

Still "enjoying" the heat and dry this summer--and the bounty that comes with it (it did rain a little bit the other day).  Honestly, I promised myself I would scale it back a bit this year and not make it so hard on myself like last year but this has not worked out quite like I planned.  I'm working just as hard while much of what I'm harvesting at the moment is a glut:  tomatoes, cucumbers, figs, apples, even zucs still.  

And though I'm getting a more reasonable/moderate harvest of aubergines, onions, snap peas, French beans, komatsuna;  these in addition to the excess of the previous means I'm simply overflowing.  I'm barely coping.  Maybe I'm not quite even coping:  my counters and fridge are all full, not to mention my freezer and cupboards.  

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My fermented crushed tomatoes finally finished actively bubbling;  I skimmed off the solids into a jar in the fridge for winter use (still pretty liquidy) and have been using the remaining liquid to cook with now--it's salty and delicious.  I have about 2 L in the fridge and could maybe squeeze in one more jar of the same size (fridge is pretty full!).  The husband has put some tomato slices to dehydrate, and I also bottled a batch of tomato/chili sauce using some of the jars I liberated last week.

My newest batches of ice cream are fig/strawberry and fig/blackberry, both using berries we picked and froze last summer plus fresh figs.  I made just plain fig ice cream too but found it uninspiring, though the kids didn't complain.  

At the allotment I started picking salad cucumbers, variety Marketmore (from my own saved seed).  Recall the pickling cucs there all succumbed to slugs, though I still have both those and Marketmore also growing at home (and have been picking them for several weeks now).  I've attempted to grow them vertically but with limited success.  The cucs at the allotment have a bamboo cane teepee but are not growing up it much--it's a tangle of vines and hard to see any fruits amongst the lush leaves.  The cucs at home are more in a cluster of bamboo canes.  This also makes it hard to find them--especially the pickling cucs--before they get too big.  I still want to grow them up canes but I'll try rows next year, for ease of picking.

Lastly, the son and I have managed to replant the mange tout bed at the allotment with lettuce and Chinese cabbage seedlings, and the remainder of the potato bed with fennel;  we spent some time forking out grass runners and deep mulching with wood chips first.  I need to the same to the cabbage beds next, now that I've harvested them;  while it's late in the season there are a few things that can still start now, such as overwintering onions, spring cabbage and pak choi/komatsuna.  And I'll need a clear bed to plant garlic in early October too.