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Jul 12, 2023

Garden mysteries

It happens every year. So, why does it always surprise me? That August-garden feeling. The what-was-I-thinking-last-May? feeling. During spring, planting a dozen spindly, little tomato plants seemed

It happens every year. So, why does it always surprise me?

That August-garden feeling. The what-was-I-thinking-last-May? feeling.

During spring, planting a dozen spindly, little tomato plants seemed like a good idea. After all, dry weather messed with last year’s planting. Our patch hardly yielded enough tomatoes to eat, let alone some to freeze for chili, spaghetti sauce, soups and other homemade delicacies. The Big Boy tomatoes should have been called Little Dudes. The cherry tomatoes could have been shot out of a peashooter.

I mourned the loss of a steady stream of plump, sweet tomatoes (though I did not grieve the loss of boiling and peeling for hours in a sauna-like kitchen).

This year, we considered downsizing our produce production. Instead, Hubby and I planted a dozen scraggly, little seedlings. Half would not survive spring frosts, we assured each other. The other half would shrivel with a rainless summer, producing more itsy-bitsy tomatoes attacked by scary, green willy worms.

As if to confirm we were black-thumbers, a record-breaking drought hit the Midwest the entire month of June.

However, the garden has thrived. This, despite the fact we skinflints rationed expensive town water so closely the green beans were sneaking Dasani bottles on the black market. When prayed-for rains finally arrived in July, our greedy garden gulped it with gusto. And grew. And grew.

Go figure.

For once, the green beans are thriving, as are turnips my mother never would have believed I would plant and eat. The 90-pound-weakling tomato seedlings now top five feet, bristling with fruit. Before summer’s end, we may overdose on cucumbers. A terrifying squash invasion appears imminent.

Squash is a mystery in itself. First, that Hubby and I like it. We plant four kinds. When friends and neighbors lock their mailboxes, we mail squash to random addresses so we will not suffer Midwest Guilt for Wasting Food.

One year, despite our usual over-planting, our garden produced two summer squashes. One squishy acorn and one butternut squash. No zucchini.

None.

Who plants zucchini without producing at least one? How could we, the squash fans of the universe, fail so miserably? We kept the shameful secret for years.

Evil squash bugs had wreaked havoc. Online gardening experts advised us to pick them off plants and drop them into soapy water.

A related squash mystery: who on earth possesses the time and patience to pick 2,729,333 bugs off plants? And what do we do with 3,211 buckets of soapy bugs afterward?

Another year, bees ignored our lovely squash flowers. Instead, they pollinated all the weeds.

Having studied expert gardeners’ websites, I resorted to using Q-tips to artificially inseminate squash blossoms with pollen.

Do you know anyone else who has run a squash fertility clinic? With a zero success rate?

Me, neither.

This year, though, bees ran me out of the patch as if they held the deed to the land. Zucchini, summer, butternut and acorn squash are born daily. I feel like the mother of multiple sets of octuplets.

Personally, I think the overwhelming abundance is a punishment because I have procrastinated cleaning the freezer for several months … um, years. Those veggies know this and love to put me in a bind.

I could go on and on … What, I have, already?

Okay. I will cut to the chase: the overall mystery is that next May, we will do it all again. Plant and over-plant.

Why?

Because grocery-store produce cannot compare to a plateful of veggies fresh from the garden. Rare when something that tastes so good is actually good for us!

But other reasons outshine suppertime inspiration. Watching dead seeds live – witnessing hundreds of tiny resurrections every spring – reminds us of the Big Resurrection and the promise of our own resurrections to come, if we know Jesus. And no droughts, reluctant bees, soapy squash bugs, or even scary, green willy worms will interfere with the harvest.

Eden will return.

That is the biggest and best garden mystery of all.

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