Remembering to Enjoy the Fruits of the Labors

It has, after all, been busy.  I won't go into the details but it has been hard enough just keeping up with the basics -- mowing, trimming, weeding and the like.  Blessedly, periodic rain showers have thus far taken irrigation off the task list, and so far the bugs have kept their distance.  Still, attentions have been squeezed.  Some key opportunities have been overlooked -- like enjoying the fruits of my labor.  There is lettuce that needs cutting and consuming.  Spinach is almost ready to enjoy, and the radishes -- planted quite late as something of an after-thought -- are swelling pink above ground.   I spotted a juvenile cucumber yesterday, and any day one or another of the squash varieties will push itself from blossom to bulge.  I will need to keep more careful watch.  Harvest, after all, is the point of it all.

That said, we plucked our first "Egg Yolk" tomato from the vine on the deck last evening -- bright yellow and  bite-sized -- and slurped down its heavenly first-of-the-season sweetness before I could even take a picture of it.  More are mustering their colors.

It's time to commence some seriously savored eating!

So I need to start paying better attention, and better organizing time.  The garlic planted last fall was the first to show its foliage, and I have been mindful of the graceful scapes spiraling from their centers for several days now.  But it has stood their bereft and ignored -- an inexplicably low priority.

Until this morning.

Dripping from the exertion of some post driving in the humid heat and late for an appointment in town, I was hurriedly closing up the shed when the scapes, in the back of the garden, waved their hands like eager school children imploring the teacher to "pick me; pick me."  And so I did.  Retrieving the knife I had set aside for precisely this purpose, I slashed my way down one row, then another.  There are more to cut -- there was time for but two of the seven rows -- but it's begun.

And tonight there will be garlic pesto to show for it.

You'll want to keep your distance --unless, of course, you are hungry.