Update on the June Food Gardens

This double-dealing weather has not been the best for growing, so I’m hoping we get some consistently hot, sunny weather come July.

The veggies are coming along, but slowly. Cucumber and hot pepper plants are still insanely small. Kentucky pole and scarlet runner beans are starting to vine, but again, so carefully. Same for yellow squash. Beets are doing OK, and the spring arugula and lettuces are still coming in, so we’ve been eating lots of greens. Corn is doing well, as are strawberries and tomatoes. Black Beauty eggplant is lurching along.

What are really THRIVING are the russet, Yukon Gold, and red potatoes. A long, long row of wild, bush-like plants nearly eclipsing the adjacent tomatoes. We’ll be digging out LOTS of spuds come fall. Everything else – chick peas, carrots, herbs, peaches, nasturtium, borage – pretty much all the rest of the edibles, are doing tolerably well.

On these rainy evenings, I’ve been poring over Tamara Weiss’s excellent book, ‘Potluck at Midnight Farm’. Love, love, love the vegetarian recipes inside, and the photography and personal stories are great. Carly Simon’s Martha Vineyard home and gardens are to die for.

I see myself there, in the center of the circular herb garden, sipping tea and nibbling Aquinnah bread with this Wisdom-of-the-Earth Sister, dogs frolicking at our feet, summer hydrangeas in full, beauteous, dark blue bloom.

Keep dreaming, beloveds.