Harvest time.... ugh!

I like to classify myself as a bad gardener. I do all the things that bad gardeners do: I don't weed, I won't thin plants, I never plant anything on time or like the books say I should, I believe all seeds should be sown the same way regardless of being bush beans or pole peas or hill squash, I never water the garden no matter how little rain we've had, and I almost never venture into the garden until it's so full of vegetables that people driving by stop and comment on them. And yet, my gardens grow well in spite of all my lack of efforts. I try to show the plants that I am a bad gardener by neglecting them and leaving them to the wilds. They just keep on growing and producing and coming back next year. I wish they would get the hints sometime.

Then there's harvesting time. Normally this is a time of year when all the better gardeners are singing the bounties of their green thumbs with joy and many adjectives. For me, it's a time of year that is stressful and regretful. I stress over trying to carve out a few minutes each day to pull the stuff from my gardens. Then I stress over the work involved in cleaning and storing the stuff for later use. Then I stress over finding recipes to use the stuff and remembering to buy the right ingredients to make those recipes. Then I stress over the left-overs and making sure that all the wonderful garden stuff gets eaten properly. I also spend a lot of time each harvest season regretting things. I regret that I planted arugula and not radicchio. I regret that I didn't make the garden bigger but instead just crammed everything so close together that I can't find me peas under my cucumbers. I regret that I didn't get out soon enough to harvest the beans before they turned chewy. I regret that I didn't use all the broccoli before it got shoved to the back of the freezer and hopelessly freezer burned. Suffice to say, harvest time is not a very fun time for me.

Maybe someday I will become a better gardener and actually take care of the plants. Hopefully my care will lead to the plants to get the hint and stop producing so much so that my harvest time is nicer. Maybe...