First Fruits

This year’s vegetable garden is just about the sorriest one I’ve ever had. You know from previous posts that the radishes didn’t turn out. The lettuce bolted and went all to seed before it even leafed out. What is there has been salad for the bugs. I’ve been lazy and let the grass and weeds encroach on the edges.

Early in the season, it became evident that the cucumbers were my best, brightest hope. I set up a cage around them so the guy who mows the lawn wouldn’t mow them too. I lovingly trained the vines to climb the cages, coiling the soft baby tendrils around the wires. Today I was both rewarded and downcast.

First, the reward. Today I picked two firm, dark green, five-inch cukes. They were just waiting for the rain that finally came this week to plump out. There’s a third that will probably be ready tomorrow. I rubbed the spines off one and ate it, sun-warmed, right there in the garden. It had a satisfying crunch, mild flesh, no seeds, and not the least touch of bitterness.

For bitterness, I pulled some of the salad greens that have survived - deeply notched, oak-leaf shaped leaves with a pungent, almost radish-like flavor, stronger even than arugula. I think it’s some sort of cress. Its peppery heat contrasted nicely with the cucumber for a little mid-afternoon snack.

The carrots are still making a valiant effort in soil that is really too hard for them. I pulled one up and it was about half an inch long by five microns wide. I ate it for dessert. I think I detected a molecule of carrot.

The bad news is that I’m not the only one snacking in the garden. Every black-eyed susan bud has been chewed off. Every piece of cucumber vine that sticks outside of the cage has been chewed off. Chewed-off ends, rather than neatly clipped ends, implicate deer as the culprits rather than rabbits. And the cucumber cage is tall enough that a rabbit would probably need stilts to reach some of the vines.

The vines on the ground remain unnibbled (perhaps because of their cover of weeds). So I gently unwound all the soft green tendrils and laid the cucumbers back on the ground. I tied some soap scraps to the wire cage, although I suspect soap’s efficacy as a deer deterrent is a myth perpetrated by Unilever. The approaching thunderstorm will probably dissolve all the soap anyway. Just as long as it makes the cucumbers happy...