August 6, 2008

After a vacation on the sunny beaches of Alabama I returned to find my garden nearly out of control. Tomatoes in Plot #48 had completely outgrown their cages and the larger plants were collapsing onto the smaller plants causing a bit of a domino effect.

After trying in vain to hammer in stakes sturdy enough to hold these monsters upright I finally gave up and saying to myself, "I guess they'll grow on the ground as well" I inspected my fast growing romas,

nibbled on a few cherry toms,

and headed to Plot #68 to see what was happening over there.

I was surprized to find my turnips already far past thinning stage so I pulled a few of them out with big plans involving greens for later in the evening.

Now I don't remember if I ever related the story of my lost bean plants to you people so let me do so now. Early on in the season, as many of you will recall, I planted a bunch of pole bean seeds around a nifty little bamboo pyramid. A few of these plants sprouted (not many) only to be soon eaten by unseen critters assumed to be cute little bunnies. Feeling frustrated and beaten I simply gave the bamboo pyramid to another gardener, retilled this whole section of Plot #69, planted a row of turnips, and soon forgot to plant anything else. The turnips, as previously mentioned, promptly sprouted, much to my delight, but soon I noticed that so were some of the bean seeds I had so cruelly forsaken. Shortly before leaving for vacation my daughter, Jordan, and I went down to the garden with wooden stakes and twine in hand and built a small support for the two or three sprouted plants to climb. Days later another bean sprouted and we added another stake and some more twine. The next day another sprout appeared on the other side of this particular section of the garden and we pounded in one more stake. No more than an inch or two tall as we left for vacation, they had grown nicely while we were gone and are now well on their way to the top of their hurriedly constructed frames, and while not as advanced as the beans in the community patch nearby I could tell I would soon be harvesting beans of my own.

After surveying the rest of the garden I found I was growing lazy as the summer progressed and was not in any mood to pull the weeds which had gained a pretty solid foothold during my abscence, so I harvested some lovely beets, carrots (larger now) and squash. Noticing one of my potato plants was turning brown and wilting severly I thought it would be a good time to see what was happening underneath so I wriggled my hand into the dirt and, in the words of the great Frank Barone, "Holy crap!" I pulled out a beautiful, if a bit muddy, red potato.

Digging around further I harvested a few more taters, grabbed a few handfulls of lettuce (from lettuce land of course) and soon headed home to cook a satisfying meal of grilled London Broil with turnip greens, squash, and a simple salad.

It ain't so bad havin' a garden, y'all.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!