Just because a potato is odd doesn’t mean it won’t taste good. It may be that the oddest potatoes have the best flavor. If you want funky, funny potatoes, you’ll probably need to grow them. Funky, funny potatoes don’t make it onto store shelves. Their destiny is compost bins and factory foods. To make it onto store shelves, potatoes can’t look like they have a mind of their own.

This odd potato ended up turning into hashbrowns for breakfast. Now they don’t look so funky.

There are plenty of other odd vegetables in the garden. It’s time to glean leftover vegetables to prepare the beds for overwintering vegetables like shallots and garlic. These odd little onions and carrots, gleaned from a vegetable bed, will make a number of happy dishes.

The rains are gone and the sun is back. Not the burning sun of midsummer, but the gentle rays of spring and fall. The apples are ready for picking. The best apples are those eaten right off the tree. There is a crispness to apples still on the tree that is missing from store apples. The apple growers don’t want to date their produce. When you buy an apple in a store, it’s impossible to know when that apple was picked. Maybe someday, a daring apple grower will put the date when they picked their apples on each apple. That would upend the apple cart and send the other apple growers into a panic. “But, but, but my apples picked six months ago are as good as their apples picked today!” they’ll say. Probably the USDA would ban the practice and make it illegal for growers of any produce to let customers know when their fruit and vegetables were picked. “Produce is produce is produce. It doesn’t matter when it’s picked!” or so the claim goes.

Bee-like hoverflies make the most of fall’s waning sun. Sit next to a batch of feverfew, Tanacetum parthenium, and in a matter of hours, and the whole world of flying insects will whizz past you. Feverfew is known for curing migraines. Maybe that is why the hoverflies and bees come to sip on these flowers. With eyes as big as hoverflies, migraines must be a common problem. When you have eyes with so many lenses, a few of them must get out of focus, and then think of the pounding headache you get.

Speaking of headaches, Skunky’s mother has just hatched her second clutch. They started hatching yesterday and this morning she is off her nest with her new chicks underneath her. So what do you call these chicks in relation to Skunky? Are they Skunky’s younger sisters and brothers? Siblings one brood removed? And next year’s broods will be Skunky’s siblings two broods removed, three broods removed, and so on? Trying to keep track of so many siblings and relatives must drive the chickens crazy, which is why they’re often nibbling on feverfew.

This afternoon I am as happy as a sunflower. The shiro-hana 白花 bean harvest has begun. I’ve been eyeing the massive bean pods hanging from the shiro-hana 白花 bean vines all summer. They are ready to pick when their pods dry and turn fox color. I collected the first test harvest today. Will I make the goal of harvesting a hundred or more pounds? We’ll see. The harvest will last through October.

Open a dry pod and startling white giant beans stare back at you. It’s like they are saying, “You can’t just eat one … or I’m to beautiful to eat … or I bet you want to plant me.” I may have enough to sell at Bow Little Market’s Harvest Market on Saturday, October 3. It may be the first time anyone has ever been able to buy them fresh in the Pacific Northwest ever.

Artichokes do grow in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s proof. Artichokes is one of the things customers asked for at the farmers market this summer. Next season I’ll attempt to provide a steady supply from late July onwards. They are a thistle, but the leaves are soft and look lovely in any garden. They are worth growing just for their looks.