Hard to believe that its the end of our 4th year at Nottoway

Time does fly; we began the garden in July of 2011 and now its time to close things up for the 2015 summer. This year's close up is earlier than normal because of our impending Camino jaunt.
Have already stripped down some of the beans. This year the bean harvest was wonderful. So delicious and plentiful, hate to take the vines down.
My favorite recipe is to blanch the beans, sautee them and toss them with a lemon, toasted pine nuts, parsley, and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I've been pleased with the tomato harvest, too. I have roasted the Roma and the grape/little ones at 200 degrees for 4 hours. The tomatoes taste like candy when warm. Have used them as a "condiment", too. Actually, I prefer to scoop up handfuls for a snack. The giant heirloom tomatoes were great- some yellow and dark red ones that were yummy with fresh mozzarella. For some reason I planted dark brown sunflowers rather than the traditional yellow ones. I think I wanted "short" ones and those were the only seeds available when I bought seeds.
I have been harvesting the sunflowers, too. They are pretty even though not as dramatic as the yellow ones. Last year I put in cone-flowers for the gold finches as well as some Stella D'oro day lilies for color and they had flourished. The rest of the harvest is problematic- lots of carrots and radishes at the beginning of the season. I loved the garlic and onions that were planted in the fall of 2014. However, I planted a bunch of beets but have yet to harvest them- just don't know what to do with them.   Last time I did beets, I swore I wouldn't plant them again but had delicious beets at the Greek restaurant in Tysons "Nostos" last winter and thought I'd try again- the issue isn't with planting the beets, its with cooking them.
Will head  over to Nottoway tomorrow  after dropping Carly off at the Metro to do some more clean up- it was very hot today. Did an almost 8 mile hike to Meadowlark gardens this morning- with a full pack. It was so humid and hot that I haven't done much since arriving home at noon. We were walking for 3 hours but ran into a couple from church ....Peggy and ? Thopmpson while walking on Meadowlark Drive. We ending up chatting for about 20 minutes about the WOD trail and the easement to Meadowlark. Apparently, there is going to be a path to Wolftrap so that one could walk to see concerts if one was a maniac. I guess we could drive to Meadowlark and park in a neighborhood and then walk.
This afternoon, I did spray paint the greek column I trash picked for my huge plant. It looks better with the sandstone spray paint finish than the gold with black antique finish. Ran out of spray paint at the same time I ran out of steam.