GARDEN DIARIES

Remember that garden thing I was doing? Yeah, me neither. No...that's not true. I can't ever really forget about the garden because everytime I stand at the kitchen window I stare out at the mess that it has become. To say that we have been a bit neglectful is an understatement. That guy up there has been camped out on my parsley for days. I just let him stay. There's no way we're ever going to eat that much parsley. I figure I can share. But really, other than pulling up weeds and raking out the leaves, I figured there wasn't much to be done. The stuff we planted for our Fall garden really didn't come in, or it's just taking a lot longer to come in. And for weeks I've looked out on our tomato plants seeing tons of green tomatoes. I have started researching pickled green tomato recipes.

So, I finally had enough. I grabbed my tools and headed out to clean up the sad, neglected garden. I pulled weeds and raked up leaves. I harvested the last of the cucumbers and pulled up the dead vine. The dead smashed tomato plant and failing pepper plant came up. Chris's pepper plant was so loaded down with peppers that one of the limbs fell off while I was pulling peppers off of it. Then, I got to the tomato plants. Cherry tomatoes that had been green just two ago where now bright red. I plucked all the red ones I could find which turned out to be quite a lot.

When I peered into the mass that is the big tomato plant I found one perfect red tomato. The rest of the plant is loaded down with green tomatoes. I left them. I didn't know what else to do. I guess if I still have green tomatoes by next weekend, we'll have pickled green tomatoes.

In a last ditch effort for a Fall garden, I sprinkled the last of the lettuce seeds down in the bare space. I brushed the dirt off my hands, gathered by tools and my harvest bowl and called it a day.