I plop a ripe red raspberry into my mouth and drop another one in the bucket. I’m in my raspberry patch. Somehow the summer has slipped by when I wasn’t paying attention and suddenly, the raspberries are ready for plucking, as are the peas. Meanwhile, the lettuce also needs another cutting. At this time of the year, everything planted a few months ago seems to be ripening at warp speed.
Summer is at its peak and so is my garden. The trouble with a successful garden is that you have to harvest it. I love gardening but wouldn’t mind if someone else took care of harvesting.
Mostly I enjoy gardening. Watching green shoots push through the ground is exciting. I don’t mind weeding. It’s satisfying to pull up weeds and make the garden look tidy. Thinning the carrots is fun, mostly because they are my favorite vegetable. Harvesting the radishes is easy. They pop out of the ground.
When I finish cleaning all the ripe berries, I trudge inside and empty my bucket on a paper towel covered cookie sheet. Best way to free the berries from bugs and worms.
Next, I head out to the pea pods, scissor in hand, and carefully snip ripe peas, letting them fall into my bucket.
Every once in a while, I open a pod and gobble down the sweet green peas, noting that many of the vines are already drying up and withering away. Summer is intense but short in this northern climate.
Once I finish harvesting today’s produce, the vegetables still need to be prepped. I rinse the peas in a colander, par-boil them, fill up several containers and throw them in the freezer to be used next winter. I wash the lettuce and place it in my 30-year-old salad spinner (which still works great) to get rid of the excess water. As I refrigerate the luscious green leaves, I envision them, crisp and sweet, in a salad or a BLT sandwich.
Late afternoon, I finally take a break and sit in my lounge chair on the deck. Within minutes, thunder rumbles in the distance and dark clouds rapidly cover the blue sky. Within minutes, wind, rain, lightning and more thunder fill the air.
Snug and dry, I watch this show of Nature, oh so happy that my garden chores are finished.
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