This year after two floods – second one happened in July with 4 inches of rain – I can’t believe my garden is producing this well. So far I’ve managed to get 3 dozen ears of corn, some peppers, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, and potatoes. Sadly, it’s those precious heirloom beans that didn’t quite make it through the second flood. I managed to pick one mess, so we had a medley of sorts for dinner with white-half runner, rattlesnake, and goose beans. It was soo good. I think I will just leave the rest on the vine and save them for seed for next year.
So, it was a nice surprise one day when some good friends called and said to come out to their country garden and pick beans. Well we couldn’t pass that up and we jumped in our truck and drove 40 minutes out to their garden that day. They received the same amount of rain as we did but their garden sits on a hill – so they still have a bountiful garden.
We picked a bushel that day and I canned 14 quarts – there is nothing like good friends.
This year I’ve become used to all the weeds, bugs, floods, and frosts. It’s when something quite out of the ordinary happened (like floods are ordinary) that I just threw up my hands, laughed, and thought, What next? Quite unenexpectedly one day while working in the garden, I heard big paws thumping on the ground, and then I heard someone holler, “TANNER!” I should have realized he was coming after me, his favorite neighbor, but it was too late. The neighbor’s big, brown, 120-pound Lab, Tanner, dashed through the vegetable garden stomping on plants as he ran to greet me, with his big tongue hanging out. He loves me what can I say. Except now the onions are not standing up so pretty and straight, and the poor corn plant on the end… Oh well, I straightened them up the best I could – they’ll grow.
