In the hush of impending fall, with a single cricket cheep-cheep-cheeping in the backdrop, Salvina and Giovanni Iacono savor the final days of their summer garden. Salvina beams as she shows off the electric pink blooms of her Crown-of-Thorns, flora known as a “Jesus Plant,” which she cultivated from a friend’s clipping. She’s proud of a snake plant, grown from seed, with flat leaves that stretch high from its pot. And she points to a budding, pink ball that will one day yield carob, a pod with chocolate-like seeds found in hot climes like her native Sicily.

While Giovanni delights in the foot-long purplish-red string beans, an olive and lime tree, the perfume-scented basil bushes and fuzz-covered quince dangling from branches, his prize so far this year is the squash. Recently, Giovanni harvested a 12-pound, 57-inch “gagootz,” or cucuzza.The massive thing is one of dozens that sprout from vines that wind around the Prince’s Bay property -- in front of the house in the shrubbery, betwixt poles in an herb garden or anchored by a prolific persimmon tree that looks like a tropical umbrella.