Vegetables!

The garden is on the verge of bursting. In the space of a few days, we went from a stalk of asparagus here and a few spinach leaves there to a sudden abundance of garlic scapes, basil, spinach and lettuce. After such a late spring and the slow - painfully slow - growing of  seedlings, I plain old forgot that these plants would actually produce. Now as I walk through the garden, I feel slightly overwhelmed by what's coming… and how I'm going to deal with all of it so as not to let anything go to waste. Mostly, I realize I'm going to have to set some time aside - not for "gardening", but for picking, washing, cooking, freezing, and canning.

Of course I shouldn't speak too soon. You never know with those pesky beetles who devour squash plants and the little critters (I suspect a mole) who like to take two bites out of every ripe strawberry. But for now it looks like we will have vegetables.

My first summer recipe was garlic scape pesto. The first batch was way too hot, so it went into the freezer to be dealt with another time. The second batch was delicious: scapes, oil, basil, walnuts, and parmesan. I froze half and the other half was devoured in one sitting. We're as bad as the beetles.  

Happy gardening!