Belated Harvest

With everything that has been going on in our lives, E and I have not been paying too much attention to the garden.

But, this year, we were much more professional than in years past, so we have an irrigation system (plus it's *raining* right now, weird!).

Turns out, that even as your life is spiraling into its own random course, the garden, if properly planted, fertilized and watered, will continue to grow in your absence.

This morning, I finally had time to harvest after about 3 weeks of neglect (this was the haul minus the bag I packed up for E2, and without any okra, radishes, or cucumbers, all of which are also ripe):



Yes, I will be giving away some serious gift tomatoes at work tomorrow...

This awesome harvest is very unfortunately timed, as the heating element in our oven took the liberty of entertaining us with a very spectacular failure yesterday evening. I wish, in hindsight, that we had taken pictures, but at the time, we were watching the arc travel the filament despite the oven being turned off with E at the ready with a fire extinguisher, so the camera was nowhere near the top of our list. Bummer -- this would have been a good week to return to the slow-roasted tomatoes... And, of course, while I'd scheduled a weekend to can at the G's as they recovered from burning man, somehow that didn't make the cut due to our other obligations (duh!). So, we're stuck with entirely too many tomatoes. I suspect I'll find a way to turn this problem into a blessing. Perhaps I'll have to make and freeze sauce...

Anyways, in case you couldn't tell from the larger picture, one of the hilarious things about the garden is what happens to small-to-medium sized summer squash when left on the vine entirely too long:



Yes. That is my arm for scale.

So, the moral of the story is that a well-tended garden will just keep growing and producing in September even if you completely neglect it. No matter what else is going on in your life, the garden will grow.

I find this very comforting.