I’m swamped with vegetables. I’m hardly complaining. In fact I’m grateful.
My husband has a large garden out at his mom’s place where he grows all manner of interesting things. He’s got an orchard of assorted fruit trees and hazelnut trees. His garden has licorice and echinacea along with the assorted table veggies, and even horseradish.
Over the years he’s nurtured marshmallow root, valerian, gingko, compass plant, Jerusalem artichoke, and other natural foods and herbal remedies I’ve forgotten. Our front yard has more berries, herbs, and flowers as well as our own supply of ragweed used to combat allergies.
I’m thankful for each and every plant.
Right now it’s peak veggie season. Beans desperately need to be topped and tailed and frozen. The carrots are just rapidly approaching proper eating size and shortly it’ll be time to get them in the freezer beside the beans. The Yampa, or wild carrot, are as big as they’ll ever get and the peas, which I thought were done, are getting some new pods on.
We’ve got beets to try as well as some parsnip-rooted parsley and a few new potatoes which are going wonderful in a lovely salad with feta and chives and kalamata olives.
Yes, I’ll be busy, but it’s a good busy, and it means good, healthy, tasty food in the dead of winter.
It’s also a connection to our past and our future. Veggies have been around in some form since we were hunter-gatherers. They’ve always been collected and saved in some manner for the cold times ahead.
If we ever succeed in blowing ourselves up or scorching a major portion of the planet there’ll still, somewhere, be a patch of soil that’ll grow something.
Vegetation in some form will survive and sustain us, and for that I’m grateful.
For right now, I’m in the midst of gathered veggies that need my attention. I’m grateful for that, too.
Not Always As Planned, a Ten Things of Thankful Post
15 hours ago
5 comments:
I am really jealous of others that have a garden. My picture is posted on the wall of the garden supply store so that no one will sell me plants or seeds. See, I torcher plants. Plants that come into my home normally have a slow and painful death. I hate that I do that too. I want to be a good gardener. I am just completely bad at it. Oh well.
LOL. I got a kick out of that, Samantha. I'm not too bad with plants, but it's my husband who has the gift. My family jokes that he could grow potatoes in cement.
We have a productive vege garden too although being late winter there's not much in it other than hardy greens like silverbeet. But we're still eating potatoes and pumpkin that we harvested in the autumn. It's a wonderful feeling to look at your plate and know that you grew or produced almost everything on it.
And our fruit trees are almost blossoming which I always feel is a double blessing. First the beauty of their flowers and then the fruit.
Other than basil, we're not great gardeners. But what you all have going sure sounds great!
I don't suppose the marshmallow root tastes anything like...nah. I suppose not. Ah well.
Yes, Dawn, It is a great feeling. I agree about fruit trees being a double blessing.
Marshmallow root isn't nearly as exciting as it sounds, Crabby. I found it made a reasonable gluten replacer except that it gave me a sore throat.
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