Late Stage Garden

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Savor the Abundance

My life is no longer the early-stage garden of hope, with its rich black loamy soil and precious little seedlings, all carefully watered and weeded and fertilized on a daily basis, in rapturous anticipation of the bounty they would one day produce.

Nor is it a mid-stage garden with dropped buds turned to fruit, when the harvest is too much to keep up with. Pounds of ripe cherry tomatoes weighing down the vines, peppers of all shapes and sizes, a perfectly shaped eggplant just waiting to be plucked and consumed.

No, mine is a late-stage garden, in the blistering heat and harsh light of late August -- parched and rangy, neglected for weeks and ready to bolt. However, if I look closely enough, I’ll find many surprises (some pleasant, some not): a zucchini the size of a baseball bat; an assortment of lemon cucumbers I don’t remember planting; an artichoke, over 6 feet tall topped with a fuchsia thistle; some kind of leafy green thing teeming with aphids; and over there, a tiny pumpkin holding on for dear life to a brown and brittle vine that can’t possibly be supplying any water. Bees and slugs and Bluejays and quail hide among the refuse.

My choice is clear. I can either focus on what has gone wrong or on what has gone right. Life is an all-you-can-eat buffet, and you don’t necessarily get to choose what’s on your plate. At this point, my task is to savor the abundance, even if it comes in ways I didn’t expect. So, let me learn to make zucchini bread. Cut up the cucumbers and put them in a pitcher of water. Place the thistle in a vase. Admire it.