The Harvest Begins in Earnest

My garden is amazing me this year. I've never had so much success. We had wonderful lettuce and spinach for several weeks. I'm frying up some chard tonight for dinner. I got my first tomato yesterday and I've been getting about two-three pounds of green beans per week for the last two weeks. My cucumbers are this wonderful long variety with very small seeds, sort of like the ones they call English or Hothouse cukes in the grocery store. I'm getting 5-10 of those per week. The squash is starting to come on strong and the volunteer pumpkin plant, while it may do the eggplants in, has a tiny pumpkin on it that we'll try to keep alive for the fall. I'm considering nipping off all the other blossoms and just letting the one that has started get really big. The kids think it is a watermelon, not a pumpkin, so I'll keep you posted. It is small enough right now that it really could be either. The blossoms indicate to me that it is a squash, not a melon, but we'll see. We have peppers coming on and a couple of tiny eggplants trying to hang on in the shade of the pumpkin plant, but since I'm the only one who likes eggplant, it wouldn't be the end of the world if we don't get a ton of eggplants. It appears I may have enough plum tomatoes to can a few jars, which was my goal.

I give gardening a go every year, but this year, there is a convergence: I seem to be at the right place in my life to give it the attention it needs, the soil I've been working on for 10 years seems to be rich and generous, and the weather has been right. There's a life lesson in that for sure. Sometimes you work and work and work on something and it never goes the way you really want it to, but your efforts aren't wasted. Suddenly the time is right and all the practice attempts, during which you may not have felt at all successful, combine to give you the experience you need for the big moment. I feel like that about this year's garden.