Grandfather's garden

I thought of making a collage with some pictures taken this summer in my grandfather's garden. Thus, you can see tomatoes in different stages of ripening. I can guarantee they are delicious. I picked some today while visiting my grandfather and ate with some sheep cheese.

 The plums are not yet riped. We gathered a bag anyway to make a compote. There are enough. My grandfather has all around his garden. He makes plum brandy (tuica) each year. He saves a part from each year's productions for eventual weddings in the family, a part goes to us, children and grandchildren and he has also enough left to sell. One of my uncles is in charge of distributing the latter one in the mountain town where he lives. I suppose people in that part don't have enough plum trees to prepare this alcohol. I know they have enough apple and pear trees, but maybe they want something different too.

This is a part of the garden. You can see: onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes and maize.
This kind of maize is a recent addition to the garden. We don't usually bother to grow it because its only use is making brooms and they are not expensive. Bu this year, my mother decided that she wants to make some brooms herself, so here it is.

 Here is the end product. The classic maize broom. My mother tends to prefer these to the plastic ones. The chicken's prefer them too, they like pecking them.
Here is a favourite of my grandfather- the watermelons. He has his owns, but they are never enough and we buy a lot of them for him all summer. They make green mountains  in the cellar.

 The summer meals at my grandfather always happen under the traditional vine canopy. It makes the heat bearable and gives us a fair production of wine in the autumn. It seems we'll have enough wine this year.

 The garden includes also a small pond dug by my grandfather some twenty -something years ago. He took great pride in straightening its walls with river stones and bringing the water from the well into it through pipes. He is the only one in the village to have done this. He bought fish from a big dam in the area and he takes great care of them, spoiling them with bread or sweets. He doesn't fish them and doesn't let anyone else do it.
I and my cousins used to wait for him to leave with business and improvise fishing rods from sticks, thread and a bent needle.We tried to catch them luring them with polenta (mamaliga), without much luck. We knew about earth worms, but we were too squeamish to put them int he hook (city children, what do you want...). I remember one time, I actually succeeded to catch a fish, a bit larger than my palm, but I felt pity on it and put it in a pot with water. My aunt, who was home then, told them that it will die anyway if I throw it back in the pond, but I couldn't let it die put of water. When my grandfather came and he found the fish in the pond, I had to confess what I had done. Of course, I was scolded and if you are wandering what happened to the fish, it was thrown in the pond anyway. I think the others ate it. There was no point of cooking it, it was too small.
One of my uncles was more successful. He fished around two kilos and when grandpa returned, he pretended he had bough the fish from a shop.
I enjoy watching the fish swarm around the pond. You cans see them especially in the winter when the water is clear. But the pond houses also some very melodious frogs. They delight out ears with concerts every summer evening. In the breeding period, they even continue all day, which is very "delightful" especially when you are trying to take a nap at noon. It amuses me to listen to their different voices and try to match the baritone voiced with the large colourful males that jump from the shore when I get close to them.






  The pond is used also for watering the garden plants then the drought days. The various flowers around keep the garden beautiful, as not to mention the strawberries which I enjoy a lot. Unfortunately, this year was not a great year for strawberries.