The Garden Was Growing Quietly

Yesterday my wife asked me to put together something for dinner.

The reason wasn’t that I had suddenly become a better cook.

It was because I had discovered a ten-inch zucchini and she indicated that she had been waiting to try this recipe. She went off to play bridge, so assembling dinner became my assignment.

Now, anyone who has grown zucchini knows they seem to have two speeds. They either refuse to grow at all or they suddenly appear as if someone snuck into the garden overnight and left them there.

I could have sworn that zucchini wasn’t there the day before.

Alongside it was a six-inch pattypan squash that I also hadn’t seen. Even if you inspect the garden every day, these things somehow sneak up on you..

Of course, they hadn’t magically appeared overnight. They had been growing all along. I simply hadn’t noticed them until they reached the point where they were impossible to miss.

That little surprise got me thinking.

Every morning I wander out to my raised beds and containers to see what’s happening. During the last couple of weeks, my inspections have been more about concern than excitement. Reno has endured nearly two weeks of temperatures around one hundred degrees, and gardens notice.

The tomatoes have handled the heat remarkably well. We pick a handful of cherry tomatoes almost every day.

The squash has been another story. They generally are not happy in the heat.

High temperatures often cause the male blossoms to shrivel or disappear, which means pollination becomes more difficult. You start wondering whether you’ll get much of a crop at all.

The cucumbers haven’t done much either. The eggplant has produced lots of leaves but very little else. The green peppers have beautiful plants but very few peppers. Even the green beans have grown tall without producing many beans. Day after day I looked at healthy vines with little to show for all the watering and attention.

The funny thing about gardening is that just when you’re convinced one crop has failed, another quietly decides to exceed your expectations.

So lately I’ve been walking through the garden looking mostly for problems.

Are the leaves wilting? Is something being eaten? Has the heat done any serious damage?

Gardeners become very good at spotting trouble.

Sometimes we’re so busy looking for what isn’t working that we overlook what is.

Then came the surprise.

A ten-inch zucchini.

And a six-inch pattypan squash.

This morning I noticed tiny cucumbers beginning to form where only flowers had been a few days earlier.

The garden hadn’t stopped growing. Perhaps I had been paying more attention to what wasn’t happening than to what was.

It had simply been growing quietly.

I suspect life is often like that.

We spend so much time watching for problems that we sometimes fail to notice the good things developing right beside them. Progress is often slow enough to escape our attention until one day it becomes obvious.

Gardening has taught me that lesson more than once.

You water.

You weed.

You fertilize.

You wait.

Most days nothing seems very different from the day before.

Then one morning you’re carrying a ten-inch zucchini back to the kitchen and wondering how in the world you missed it yesterday.

Tonight’s dinner is coming from that surprise.

Judging from what I saw in the garden this morning, I have a feeling there are a few more surprises hiding under those leaves. I’ll find out tomorrow morning or the next.

Contact me if you want the reciepe.