Virgin Harvest: Update #7

Well, as a Virgin Harvester, I did okay this growing season.  We ate a few artichokes and I let the last few flower so that I could enjoy them in their full glory.  I'm not quite satisfied with how my home-grown chokes taste.  Not too meaty or filling.  This year there were hundreds of black ants all over and inside of them.  I cut the stalks and soaked them head-side-down in a bucket of water for a full day and there were still lots of ants present on their leaves.  I decided to leave them on the front deck in a vase of water and got to admire them for weeks as I would enter and leave the house.  I think the color is magnificent and such a surprise when they unfold and greet you like this, in their final stages of life.  I hope this is what happens to me when I get old.  I blossom in a surprising and captivating way.  Yes, that's my hope indeed.

I plucked all of the cherry tomatoes off of the vines today and think the colors are gorgeous.  I have plans to make a green tomato relish and over roasting the rest to freeze and use in the coming months.  I did plant my tomato plants too close together this year.  Note to self:  plant with plenty of room to grow and stretch next year!  Also, the 50 days of Summer gray did not help their growing plans.  They rallied in the last few weeks, but as the first frost approached I knew they needed to be yanked out of the ground and put to rest.  Again, kind of how I feel at the end of a season.  This gardening thing is definitely a metaphor for life.  Pay attention.  Plan.  Plant.  Nourish.  Trim off the unwanted.  Harvest.  Nourish others.  Contentment.  Rest.

Sunflowers.  Oh, how I love seeing you rise up and greet me on my drive up the road.  We planted many seeds (far too late), but a few of you sprang up at the end of September and are such a treat.  I have grand plans for next year and hope to have hundreds of sunflowers along my fence line and a patch in my yard.  So hearty and happy.  Perhaps, I would rather be like a sunflower in my later years and die a long slow, beautiful death (and not have the birds eat me would be best).

I enjoyed the Virgin Harvest challenge and hope to put some of the things I learned to use next year in the garden.  Grow.  Always growing.  Just like life.