summer veggies - a dream

summer harvest

In the summer we expect an abundance of fruit and vegetables in our well-tended gardens, after months of hard work, lots of care, adequate mulching & watering and mostly a lot of waiting.

When the harvest is not quite as copious as expected we tend to find the faults in outside factors:
- the soil where the newly created vegetable patch is located is too poor
- the compost used as natural fertilizer has not broken down enough
- the growing season started later than normal
- there was frost even after the Saints de Glaces, the indicator of the last frost in May
- etc. etc.

This year I have decided to blame the drought, the lack of rain, for the last almost 3 months. Then I took a nap this afternoon, and in my dream I entered a very lush (hence not organic Provencal) garden with ripe lemons & grapefruit (in the summer? I think not!), loads of zucchini growing on a stalk (in a dream anything is possible), plenty of tomatoes, etc. This was a very nice dream. So I am taking this as a sign to not give up on my vegetable garden yet, with its small growth of vines for potential pumpkin, 2 tiny aubergines the size of a deflated tennis ball, the tiniest cherry tomatoes and the sunflowers with their drooping heads.

I shall go out tonight and water again, from a very shallow basin with very green water. I must admit that I have broken down in a way and allowed a pump run with electricity to fetch the water and abandon the Robinson Crusoe method of hauling a small bucket on a rope, with maybe 1 liter per dip....

Happy summer gardening
and don't forget to get your patch ready
for fall planting!

Claudia