Garden Bounty

A friend once responded to the question of why she didn't have a garden with this:  "I can see no reason on earth to do all that work.  If it is a bad year you plow, disc, plant, weed, till, water, pray and pick in the 100 degree heat for a handful of pitiful vegetables.  Which, by the way, you could buy in the grocery for a lot less cost.  In a good year you have to barricade your gate to keep from being buried under all the leftover vegetables your neighbors are determined to off-load onto you.  So I just wait for the good years."

She has a point.

This year has been a good garden year for most things.  (No beans but that is a whole different story.)  Out daily forays into the garden have yielded buckets of tender yellow squash, long green cucumbers, fat purple eggplants, green peppers, onions, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, corn and tomatoes.  The problem is that while we enjoy each of these, the two of us can only eat so many.  I love eggplant parmesan, but that takes one eggplant and will last for three or four meals.  My garden is producing six to eight at a time.  You see my problem.  After a while you just get overwhelmed by all these lovely fresh veggies. 

I had been sending them home with my son until I overheard his wife at a party commenting to a friend that every time she came into the kitchen the "garden fairy" had dumped a load of vegetables on her counter.  She didn't sound excited. I decided that maybe I needed to back off on the sacks of veggies I was sneaking into the truck.

It comes to the point that you are like the Easter bunny leaving surprises for your friends and neighbors on their porch swings, in their flower pots, behind their doors, or stashed neatly by their walks.  Anything to get rid of the outpouring of produce from your lovingly tended garden.

One year I grew almost a quarter of an acre of strawberries.  (We didn't know how many plants came in a bundle and ordered way too many bundles.  Rather than "waste" them we planted each one. )  That spring I picked strawberries and we ate them until everyone developed a rash, froze them until the freezer was full, made jam that we still have left, and gave them to friends.  We were picking so many (you can't let them waste!!) that I was in danger of running out of friends.  I began to notice that no one would answer my knocks even though I was sure they were home.  If I called ahead they were suddenly leaving town for an extended trip and couldn't handle any strawberries.  I began roving through the town looking for folks unlucky enough to be siting on their porches and unable to escape my bounty.  If that failed I stooped to looking for unlocked cars and loading up the back seats with fragrant fruit.

I was in real danger of becoming a social outcast when the season finally ended. 

When that bed finally died out we've never had another one.

However, beware,  I do have a bumper crop of tomatoes.......