Self-seeding

We laugh, we cry, we say goodbye...The garden season is ending soon. Friends make the comment, "I picked the last tomato yesterday." Or, "I finally pulled out my cucumber plants today." I, too, and reduced to a mornings picking yielding only the fixings for a single salad. But even as I say goodbye to some of my big-producers, even as they begin their days decomposing into their next state of matter, if you will, nevertheless, I find delightful surprises presenting themselves in my garden.



For instance, I too, considered pulling this cucumber plant a week or so ago but left it a little longer. I went back to it again this week with the same intention. But as I pulled the vine from where it had grown into a patch of marigolds, I found one delightfully full-grown cucumber ready to pick. A last two blossoms made me decide to leave it for yet another week.

And what should decide to pop up in front of the dying zinnias? Baby dill seedlings. I pulled the "intentional" crop of dill weeks ago, but now have new dill to use in seasoning the dilly green tomatoes or dilly green beans I'll no doubt soon make soon as a fast-approaching frost utterly ends the days when things ripen on the vine.




Another self-seed payoff came in the form of baby onions. I left an onion flower lying in the onion patch a few weeks ago...and today I'm seeing new sprouts right between the lettuce and radishes and the mature onion plants. We'll have green onions with the few last salads of the season.




And when I pulled the last zucchini monstrosity, I found under one of its broad leaves a crop of tender new basil plants. I'd let some of the other basil go to flower, and though that parent basil's leaves turned a little bitter, this new basil is the beneficial result!




Taking my cue from the garden itself, I decided to bring that spirit indoors, tucking little vases of wildflowers--some of the last color from the wildflower garden--in nooks and crannies of the house.

Happy surprises!