1 This beautiful urn is planted with purple alocasia and chartreuse trailing lysimachia. The tiger lily gardens have been fantastic this year, attracting many butterflies and hummingbirds.

2 A view of the apple espalier orchard and my home beyond. The giant urn is planted with alocasia and bromeliads and is growing very nicely.

3 The citrus collection is thriving outside by the greenhouse.

4 This is the new cutting garden, which is a work in progress. This quadrant produced many beautiful lilies earlier in the summer and now is blooming with phlox and a type of yellow daisy.

5 This area has foxglove that Ryan grew from seed. It will bloom profusely next year. There are also delphinium and snapdragons.

6 This area has beds of sunflowers and cosmos yet to flower. The empty beds will be planted with perennial seeds next week.

7 This bed had more fragrant lilies. The purple flowers are verbena bonariensis, or tall verbena, whose slender stems can reach 6-feet tall and do not need staking.

8 We have never seen a more prolific crop of blueberries at the farm. We have been picking and picking and are still picking!

9 There are so many berries still on the bushes!

10 Outside the cutting garden, we're growing several varieties of mint in a bed of its own. Mint has vigorous runner roots that send up new plants and can take over a garden. As you can see, it is thriving here.

11 Behind the bee hives is anise hyssop, whose soft, anise-scented leaves are used as a seasoning, as a tea, and in potpourri. Bees love the purple flower spike and they make a light fragrant honey from the nectar.

12 Remember my blog about the hardneck garlic harvest? After a couple of weeks of curing in the carriage house, Ryan trimmed off all the long stems and left the garlic to cure for another week.

13 He then started shedding just the dirty, outermost layer of papery skin.

14 With so much garlic, Fernando pitched in to help.

15 The skin peels off quite easily.

16 Once all the skins are peeled, Ryan will then snip the root ends off.

17 This garlic head fell apart. You can see that the cloves are larger than commercial garlic and that they form around that hardneck stem. I love the unusual flavor of hardneck garlic.

18 Once all of the garlic was removed from the carriage house floor, the large harvest of nepeta, or catmint, was brought to the carriage house for further drying.

19 Once dry, the nepeta leaves will be stripped from their stems and stored in a plastic bin. I use it to fill felt cat toys.

20 The carriage house doors will be shut and the garlic will cure alongside the nepeta for another week.

21 Sasa watched with great curiosity from across the stable courtyard.

22 Now for a visit to the vegetable garden - This section has carrots, turnips, beets, celery, celeriac, onions, leeks, and potatoes.

23 Across the way, the assorted peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes are strong and prolific.

24 Ripening New Girl tomatoes

25 These tomatoes are simply amazing!

26 Fairy Tale eggplant is a mini variety.

27 Beautiful curly kale

28 Globe artichokes

29 This pretty cabbage is called Dead On.

30 Another giant urn with thriving alocasia

31 This is a panoramic shot of the graveled courtyard on the road-side of my home. I like it filled with tropical plants during the summer.

32 These urns grace the terrace of the summer house.

33 This is planted with blue agave, lysimachia, and succulents. The garden beyond is another work in progress.

34 A view of the terrace from the garden