Okra Anyone?

The okra plants are very handsome and I will have to post a picture of them soon, but I have had some excellent pods that I have used  in the rice dish which I made again today. The interesting thing about okra is that it is from Africa. I always wondered how a kidnapped people would bring theses seeds to the the New World. It must have been a nice touch of home. These pods are about 8-12 cm long and at that length are tender and have some mucus but the rice just seems to be smoother. I have been cutting up whatever I can bring in from the garden and then cooking it up.
Today I had nearly a KG of tomatoes in the harvest. The bunny protected area seems to be working and so I planted about 60 seedlings into the garden. Some things are perhaps a little close together but lettuce and some things will be harvested and then the   kale and collards will have more room to grow.




I did a lot of cleaning up today; I harvested more sunflower seeds and cut up stems and other spent plants for the compost and got the garden looking a lot neater.
I was going to till so that I could plant and put up some more fence and have room for the rest of the seedlings but then there were a few drops, then a lot more and the rain just came down heavy but only for about 10 minutes. The gauge said that we had about 60 mm of rain. However that was more than enough to fill the 55 gallon rain barrel. The potential for captured and gray water harvest are incredible.
Later I went out and want to finish cleaning up and do a little tilling and there was a clap of thunder that scared me right back in the house. That will have to wait for tomorrow.
Sadly the a watermelon and a pumpkin split open and were ruined. I think that this was due to was the rain after so much dryness lead to growth inside but the rind could not expand. Still the weight is still going up toward the goal.