Is it weird that I kind of miss the way the garden looked a few months ago? I’m torn between excitement about the produce that’s growing and nostalgia about how nice and neat things look when they’re first planted.  Oh well. I guess if you’re going to be a gardener you have to let your OCD tendencies slide a little if you want to eat anything. I’ll stick to keeping my house as orderly as possible.

As it seems with everything we do in the garden, we ran out of time before we could stake the pickling cucumbers. The bed with the greens is slowly being emptied out – everything slowed down when the weather turned warmer and we’re eating what’s left – so they’ll have room to grow outwards instead of upwards. I have fond memories of eating dry cereal in the car on my way to pick pickling cucumbers with my mom, and those were always grown on the ground, so why shouldn’t mine work? Those pickling cucumbers always ended up in a great big crock which received additions of sugar and salt for what seemed like weeks before they were put up in jars. I have no idea what my cucumber yield will be, and I have no crock, so my hopes of living up to my mother’s example are slim. However, I have made dill pickles before, and will hopefully be able to use the garlic and dill from my own garden in the process! Nice.

My squash now have blossoms and, while I’m tempted to steal the flowers to stuff them, I’m forcing myself to let them turn into actual squash. Yippee! I’m hoping enough grow that I can try curing and storing the squash over the winter to see how they do. That’s if they don’t all wind up in soup..

This week we’re eating peas, raspberries, strawberries, lettuce, green onion and the first of the mini tomatoes. Life is good.

“When you increase the number of gardens, you increase the number of heavens too!”

– Mehmet Murat Ildan