The Summer of Cucumbers

It's like Red Lobster's "Summer of Shrimp" promotion...but not.  Has anyone else noticed that it's always the Summer of Shrimp according to Red Lobster?  I wish their food was as delicious as it looks on the commercials.  Damn advertising is setting the public up for disappointment when we realize that butter never splashes as elegantly as it does on TV.

But I digress.

This is the 2nd summer I've planted cucumbers in our my garden.  When I was younger I remember that we used to grow cucumbers and tomatoes in the backyard (and maybe a melon of some kind?), so I thought I'd see what I could do on my own.  Success.  We have about a billion cucumbers.  The tomatoes are mostly still green, but they're growing!  And I have 4 bell pepper plants that have actually produced fruit.  I'm amazed.

The one major issue with our garden is thieves.  I've put up some garden fencing and I attempted to have the cucumbers grow on stakes (fail.), but the vegetables are still within reach of those who want them bad enough.  Here are the culprits:

Ferocious beasts.  

But really, they do go up to the plants and pull ripe and unripe things off.  Felix enjoys cherry tomatoes and Bosco will do almost anything to steal a cucumber.  At least they haven't started eating my herb garden...yet.  

But back to my cucumbers...They grow quickly.  We eat a lot of cucumber-based dinners in the summer.  Tonight I made a Cold Cucumber Soup that was pretty good.  Next on the list is a cucumber-watermelon-mint cocktail.  Mmmmm.


And those are my thoughts on cucumbers.  You just lost precious moments of your life reading this.  I really thought I had a point when I started... :)