Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Kindness In The Garden

When we returned back home from a 10 day summer beach vacation, I was expecting my veggie garden to be in full harvest. Hubby had set up an automatic sprinkler system. Many of the vegetables were just starting to bud so, I thought it only realistic that we'd have a semi abundance of peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant and tomatoes upon our return. I was wrong! Apparently since we weren't home, and our dog wasn't around barking, a few rabbits managed to sneak into our garden, under the fence and eat themselves into oblivion. Yes, they ate every single viable thing. There was nothing left.




When out neighbors heard of our misfortune, it didn't take them long to jump into action and share their overabundance with us! This is what I found on our doorstep the other morning:


Some other local neighbors of ours also brought over a ton of tomatoes, lots of basil and lots of cucumbers. Since then, I've been busy on my kitchen pickling the cucumbers into pickles, making tomato sauce, baked stuffed tomatoes, tomato salad with the basil and my all-time summer favorite: tomato/carrot soup with dill (the rabbits didn't eat my basil or dill but they did wipe out my parsley). I made two big batches of pesto (great in the winter over linguine) I froze as much as I could. The rest we ate almost every single night! Delish!!










Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers and the kindness of neighbors. A blessing, for sure!

8 comments:

  1. Wonderful generosity! I have animals that take a single bite out of my tomato and leave the rest behind. Sigh.

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    1. I have to worry about the birds also! They drill their beaks into the veggies or the peaches and leave holes making the food inedible. Oh well. Everybody gets to eat here!

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  2. Yes, thank goodness for the kindness of strangers. 💕
    Darn those rascally rabbits! 🐇

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    1. Hi Belinda. It was a gift from our contractor! He and his wife grow all their veggies organically. Delicious. I have big plans for that zucchini: stir fry, fritters and zucchini bread! Stay tuned.

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  3. The vegetables look amazing! Would you mind sharing your stuffed tomato recipe?

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    1. Hi Liz. I can tell you what ingredients I use but I can't tell you the measured amounts since I've been making it for years and I just follow my gut. I scoop out the insides of the halved tomatoes. I chop the insides up into bite size pieces. Then I add in my own freshly made bread crumbs (I save the ends etc from the breads we use and then crumble them), some extra virgin olive oil, grated parmesan cheese, parsley, salt & pepper, minced garlic. I mix all of that up together (it has a moist consistency, not dry) and then stuff the halved tomatoes. I bake them in a 350F oven until the tops are browned and golden. I hope that helps. Enjoy.

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    2. Thanks, I’m going to give it a go. We grew some decent sized beefsteak tomato’s this year. I get the whole not measuring thing, I frustrate the hell out of my kids when they ask me for a family recipe!

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    3. Terrific! Please let me know how they turned out. Enjoy!

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Kindness In The Garden

When we returned back home from a 10 day summer beach vacation, I was expecting my veggie garden to be in full harvest. Hubby had set up an ...