The Summer's Last Salad

The greatly anticipated arrival of October 5th, thankfully brought about the end of my 2009 gardening season. It had been a long summer (did we have a summer??) of rain, rain and yet more rain that only succeeded in bringing destruction to almost every variety of vegetable struggling to get a foothold in my swampy soil. No cucumber, carrot, tomato, pole bean, pea or pepper was spared by Mother Nature’s wrath and they all suffered equally. Thankfully, we still have supermarkets because otherwise there would be widespread famine at the homestead.

All in all the great "first in a long, long time" garden experiment succeeded, as my primary goal had been for the lil ones to plant, pick and eat their own food and be involved in every step of the process. Within the gray folds of my brain are now stored hours and hours of happy memories of the lil ones picking green beans, peas, tomatoes and pulling carrots. When someday my memory fails, digital means additionally managed to capture video and dozens of photos that will make me smile for years to come.

Rather than go into a rant about how little was collected over the course of the gardening season, let me instead tell you how incredible it was to eat the last fresh salad of the season. Salad ingredients . . . two green peppers the size of a baby's fist, 3 onions the size of a quarter, 4 small heads of broccoli, 8 carrots the size of your thumb, two cherry sized tomatoes and lastly a dozen small lettuce leaves. Ummm, how fantastic to eat something made of fresh ingredients that your planted and tended. The smells are so much stronger and the tastes so much more complex and interesting . . . I can almost taste the MUD. :)

So while the year was difficult, it certainly hasn't discouraged me from trying it all again next season!