This season has been terrible for most summer annuals – tomatoes, peppers, squash, and the like – but fantastic for the small fruits in the garden.  Blueberries, gooseberries, lingonberries, and currants have all been ridiculously productive, and I even harvested a single huckleberry, the first produced by the plant in its eight years in the garden.  And then there’s the grapes.  I have three kinds in the garden:  Red Flame Seedless, Lady Finger, and Black Monukka.  Of these, only the first two have produced fruit, and the Lady Finger only a few at that.

The Red Flame on the other hand is quite productive, and never more than this year.  Yesterday I picked maybe eight big bunches, juiced them, and then filtered the juice using three coffee filters.  The result was about a quart of beautiful, flavorful, healthful juice.  Lucky me.