The Wistful Gardener

My husband Ed and our two sons are planting our vegetable garden right now.

It's been rainy enough on several weekends here on Long Island to put off the planting till now, and the sudden appearance recently of summer's heat meant "emergency" summerizing (breaking out the oscillating fans, putting the window screens back up, and moving all the potted plants outside so they aren't in the way of the giant air conditioner that's in the middle of one living-room wall) that also put off planting.

Now my family's out there putting good things in the ground while I must work to make up for time lost last week in ferrying kids to and from school because my mother-in-law, who usually does this for me, was bringing home my father-in-law from his much-postponed prostatectomy; he had prostate cancer. (He seems to be doing okay.)

The guys are planting large-leaf Italian basil, radishes, garlic chives, regular chives, snow peas, sugar snap peas, bell peppers (a mix of red, green, yellow, and orange ones), beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and marigolds (to keep bugs away). The boys planted some sunflower, foxglove, and wildflower seeds at the back end of the garden. There's even a tiny, tiny hill, planted with cantaloupe seeds, with a moat around it. The currants we planted several years ago are still producing, and the rhubarbs keep coming back. (And the wild raspberry plants in our side yard, contained as well as possible by a trellis and string, are getting ready to produce juicy raspberries.) We have seeds for other garden goodies, but we'd have to set up another garden for them, and that's not going to happen this year. Last year we had purple eggplant (aubergine) because I love eating it; we may buy some plants later and sneak them in somewhere.

How's Ed managing gardening with one arm still in an immobilizing brace because of a biceps rupture? By doing what he can with his other arm and depending a lot on our suddenly mature 11-year-old. Even our 4-year-old is being helpful, or at least not causing too many problems. ;-) Now I understand one of the reasons farming families used to have so many kids—to help out with the work!

We don't have a good camera now, but maybe we will when everything in the garden is growing well so that I can post photos for you to see.



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