A Garden Award, A Gift Certificate & Pictures

Saturday afternoon was the Fenway Victory Gardens annual Fens Fest, an end of the summer Barbeque with live music, a huge raffle, a flea market style 'white elephant' table, garden contests and awards.

It was a great afternoon, the weather was perfect, and I was really able to get a sense of the community aspect of the victory gardens. I saw gardeners I only saw briefly at the start of the season, as well as many (most) who I had never met before.

I even won an award!!!

Best New Gardener for my section! Along with the certificate pictured above I was also given a green ribbon and a 'medal' which was an outdoor faucet handle painted gold:

I also picked up one of the new Fenway Victory Garden T-shirts:

Finally, to round out an already fun afternoon of food and conversation with some fellow gardeners they held a raffle with some really great prizes. Gail and I ended up winning a $50.00 gift certificate to the Boston Public Library book sale, unfortunately Gail and I have plans the day of the book sale so we traded our prize to a garden friend for a $25.00 gift certificate to Johnny's Selected Seeds

It was a really nice way to wrap up our first year season as gardeners. Though the season isn't over yet, I'm transitioning to fall with kale, lettuces, leeks, bush beans, radishes, and hopefully potatoes on the horizon! Maybe even a walking onion or two if we have a warm streak mid fall.

Here are a few photos of some recent harvests

We finally got a decent showing out of our second planting of carrots:

The radishes came in fast and are crisp and delicious! I'll definitely be enjoying them until it turns cold:

Finally, a nice harvest of tomatoes, green pepper, radish and dry beans:

Notice the pot in the back left of the photo? We've made a few batches of tomato sauce and they are great! I'll be really excited to enjoy them when my garden is buried under snow and ice!