IN THE GARDEN

   What a summer! My tomatoes are out of control! They seemed to grow overnight this year. Like many others, my garden was under two or three feet of snow from February to April, and I guess we can thank last winter for something, after all. All the flowers seem more profuse and brighter this year, and the flowering trees this spring were spectacular. How much of this is sheer joy at seeing anything except snow and how much is real doesn’t matter. I’m loving it, whatever the reason. The vegetable garden is the best it’s ever been. I’ve already harvested peas and beets and we’ve eaten them all. I learned how to cook beet greens, just in oil, a bit of garlic and salt and pepper, until they wilt, and boy! Are they good! I also made a lovely roasted beet, feta cheese and orange salad that went over well. I just combined the ingredients and made a dressing of orange juice, honey and a dash of sesame oil. PLEASE! If you try this, go easy on the sesame oil. I really mean a dash, less than a ¼ teaspoon. It’s just to add an earthy note. Toss this all together and serve cold. You need to overlook the pink feta. Beets do that to everything. The next time I make it, I’m going to try chopping a bit of mint into it. That might be good. We also had our first corn last night. I grew shoe peg this year, a small kernel, white variety. Last year I made the gigantic mistake of trying to grow two different kinds of corn in a very small space, resulting in something that resembled the feed corn I used to see in the mid-west. Not good to eat. This year it’s lovely and sweet and gone too soon. There are more blossoms on the cucumbers and egg plants than I have ever seen before, so I look forward to a good crop from them, too. And did I mention the tomatoes? I grew all heirlooms this year, ordered online, and raised in the house until I was sure they’d stand the weather. I actually carried them in and out for about two weeks, and it paid off in huge plants with lots of flowers and now lots of green tomatoes. I thought I’d planted them far enough away from each other, but they’ve gotten so big that I’ve had to do some creative staking so they can all get sun. When I was doing that I discovered a pepper plant I thought I’d lost to the advancing tomatoes. It had pushed up through the tomato leaf canopy and was reaching for the sun, with many flowers on its branches. I carefully staked the giants away so that brave pepper plant could grow. Anyway, it’s a fabulous garden year for sure, and I thank the gods of winter for the snow, the goddess of summer for the beautiful, even weather, and my friend Angie from Truro for the truck load of horse manure last fall, which certainly had a lot to do with all these wonderful veggies!  I’m out in the garden tomorrow again, trimming and weeding and staking. If I know you, you will probably get some tomatoes. And if I think of any more recipes, I’ll put them in the next blog. Happy Summer, everybody!