Garden of Eatin'

 To me, gardening is largely therapeutic.  In a world of gray areas, a garden bed either has weeds in it, or it doesn’t.  Plants come up, or they don’t.  You win your battles against the deer and Japanese beetles, or you don’t.  No gray.  Black and white.

When it comes to the vegetable garden, I’m most interested in getting the beds set up and planted.  Keeping them looking nice is also gratifying.  I have less enthusiasm for keeping up with the on-going harvesting.  This year my garden partner and wife (the same person) really kept up with the picking and preserving side of things.  We always do okay at that part of gardening, but this year she made it the best harvest we’ve had.

As a result, almost every meal has something from our garden.  Pickled green beans, potatoes, frozen broccoli, apple sauce… it is gratifying to know that the work we put into the garden resulted in good things to eat.  I mean, that’s the whole point, but somehow this year it seems to be abundantly clear that our abundance is from our work (and favorable weather).

Not only that, but we probably gave away 50 pounds of asparagus last spring, along with other produce as the season went along.  That feels good too.

In the past we’ve tended to overlook things that resided in the freezer or in jars on the shelves in the basement.  We hate to throw things away, but we also hate food poisoning, so out it goes.  This year, we’re doing a much better job of using what we have, so that’s progress.

I saw the seed display in a big box store on Saturday, so I guess Christmas is truly over, and the pre-gardening season is upon us.  So, we’d better hurry up and eat!