"You Can't Give 'em Away"

I know very well the windfall plenty of an overflowing garden.

For a few fleet days or weeks, everything is crisp, sun-kissed and sumptuous, far surpassing any store-bought produce on the planet.

After awhile it's just THERE. Nagging you, prodding you, spurring you to your feet when all you really want to do is snooze in the hammock.

But no...........zucchini and cucumbers are greening by the minute, growing an impenetrable hide on the outside while turning mealy and seedy inside. It doesn't take long for vegetables to pass their prime, even when they've taken all summer to be ready.

The first blushing tomato is a thrill. The first few after are still wonderful, but too soon they seem to come as ill-considered brutes in their timing. Either you're dogging the vines hourly to pounce on the earliest crimson, or you're overwrought with blighting and blackening fruit teeming outward from all your kitchen surfaces onto your back porch.

Waste not, want not. It all boils down to work, work, WORK. And boiling your are, not just from the steaming kettles of preservation on near 100 degree days. You are also boiling mad at yourself for insisting upon planting a dozen plants of this and a dozen plants of that, when half a dozen of each was really more than you ever needed.

And so in due time you become the generous, thoughtful neighbor and friend. You pack bags and baskets of the surplus, and go rapping on doors here and there. There is a mix of dread and relief in doing this; you are joyous to unload the excess but equally fearful to hear, "Thanks, but I can't possibly take these--I have more of everything than I know what to do with myself!"

Thus, you never wait to be invited in for a cup of coffee. You rap and RUN, hopeful you can escape before the bounty is deemed yours again. When you get back home and discover even MORE veggies have ripened, you wearily pack them into bags and set out a "free produce" sign at the end of your driveway.

How conflicting is the feast and famine of growing things in their season. You toil and depend mightily on the good graces of the sky. You wait patiently for exceedingly long days for that first fabulous fruit. The anticipation is akin to that first phone call from the man of your dreams, long desired, tremulous with the thrill of the chase.

Once you've snared the man (or the tomato) you wish he (or it) would leave you alone for awhile. You'd rather have supper with a girlfriend or open an easy can of spaghetti sauce.

For the past few summers, I've concertedly bought a three-pack of tomato plants, set them in pots on the porch to be nurtured to their harvest. Doing it this way has usually been a bust. There's something about hoping for large returns on hardly any investment that rarely flies for me--it's simply not my lot in life.

These days I resort to more hardy gardeners than I. I look for their roadside stands, or I wait comfortably at home. It's my turn to hear that rap on the door, and be assured--I'll answer the door cheerfully, with a surprised but gracious appreciation.

I think I'll put the coffeepot on now.