Anticipation

I spent the three hour drive back from Ann Arbor this morning thinking about the garden. I couldn't wait to get into my grubby clothes and go pull some weeds.

The tomatoes are numerous and marvellously...green. Every single plant is reaching the top of their poles, so that means they are all pushing 6' tall. I guess I will just have to wait, and keep checking.

This is the time of diligence for most gardeners. You certainly can find me anxiously peering under leaves and pulling back branches to judge the growth of my charges. Especially with most of the genus cucurbita, I seem to always miss the first and freshest catches. The cukes, I admit, I am pretty manic about harvesting when they are teeny tiny (under 4" certainly) because their skins are not sour then. But inevitably I will be making the usual harvest and I will come across a gigantic one. Where did YOU come from, I will wonder; shouldn't I have noticed you the past 6 times I poked around in here? Like the schoolkid who suddenly hits puberty and comes back from summer a head and a half taller than his peers, this cuke just appears, and nearly always startles me.

I have decided that zucchini and yellow squash shall have a short tenure in the garden, something like 2.5 weeks of production. You can succession plant these to keep them producing well. But certainly, my curtailing their lifespan will keep me from finding a club-sized zucchini in the patch, and it will also hopefully stop the proliferation of those disgusting squash bugs. Yuck. Nothing is more vile than these shield-shaped scurrying vermin making lunch (or--gah--whoopie) on your beautiful squash plants.