I work on my garden almost year round. In the late spring, I begin to put out the plants and early seeds. In the summer I am planting and picking, and eating out of hand. Each winter I yearn for the first greens from the garden.
By late summer and early fall, I am usually inundated with produce. I don't keep up with it very well, partly because of my job. However, nary a meal is put on the table that doesn't feature mostly our veggies. Then in late fall, I am picking greens, onions, squash, the last of the tomatoes, and runty (but delicious) cucumbers, and transplanting the perennials I grew in the beds into new beds.
There is a short hiatus, from early November until just after Christmas, when the seed catalogues arrive. I am still picking kale and cabbage and cauliflower, and tiny headlets of broccoli, and filling my salads with spicy mustards and arugula into late November, early December, if the snow or the cold isn't too deep.
And then! My second favorite time of the garden year: seed catalogues. My first favorite time is when the garden is in full flower and I am harvesting something daily. Many people are overwhelmed by their zucchini; I, however, have to begin dodging green beans in middle June, and on into the growing year, until, finally in late September (and sometimes even October), in desperation, I pull the last of the plants.
Just now, the third favorite time of the garden year is filling my kitchen with hope. All of the tomatoes, some of the peppers, all of the petunias, portulacas, and eggplants are reaching toward the hanging light over the kitchen table. I love to linger in the kitchen, dreaming of the summer, with only the growing light on. The little plants (portulacas and petunias are miniscule)stretch toward the light with such promise.
And I am entranced by the names: Juliet and Spoon Tomatoes, Redskin Peppers, Blue Marble and Rosa Bianca Eggplants, Sweet Spanish Onions and Rose and Purple Wave Petunias. But it's the tomatoes that have such intriguing names:
The peppers run a close second:
And then there is the Orange Bouquet Cauliflower; the Orange Sunshine Melon; the Moon and Stars Melon; Razzle Dazzle Spinach; Kolibri Kohlrabi (that could be a song), the Baby Bear and Wee-B-Little Pumpkins; Mon Cheri, Nickel, EzGold, Dragon Tongue and Maxibel Green and Yellow Beans; The Zephyr, Sunburst, and 8-Ball Summer Squash; Small Miracle, Dia Green, and Munchkin Broccoli; Little Leaf, Double Feature, Sweet Success, Triumph, and Amira Cucumbers; Green Arrow, Maestro, Knight, Patriot, and Super Snappy Peas; and the Carrots, a parade of wonderful names: Caroline, Bolero, Pot O'Gold, Mokum, Nelson, Napoli, Orange Rocket, Nutri-Red.
The Lettuces deserve a list all alone:
And the greens go on and on: just a few examples are Autumn Poem, Komatsuna Osaka Purple, Minutina, Shungiku, Silvetta Arugula, Claytonia, Mei Qing Choi, Bright Lights Chard, Red Russian, Nagoya Garnish and Tuscan Kale.
And all of these wonderful names, plus many left over from last year, go into my 23 beds! My garden is chock-full of delicious, delectable stuff interspersed by edible flowers such as Nastursiums (Empress of India and Apricot Trifle are my favorites), Calendulas (Touch of Red and Calypso Orange), and old faithfuls like Zinnias and Marigolds. It's so gorgeous. I can hardly wait! I have to run out to the kitchen and get a fix from the seedlings!