The Garden Bountiful

Yesterday, we said a possible farewell to our garden, as we may have a frost tomorrow night.

It's time to thank our garden for a wonderful year.  Here's what was left in my raised bed (my spouse has a regular ground plot - I need the raised bed because of my back).

 

Thank you for all the tomatoes.  We thought we were all done, but yesterday, three more cherry tomatoes showed up.  As you can see, though, they were in rough shape.

Thank you, eggplants.  A little finger variety did wonderfully for us; the best crop of eggplants we've ever had.

Peppers?  Also a great year.  These are both small varieties and we still have some ripening.  

 

Red.

Yellow. Thank you, both.

The one butternut squash that we got.  Almost ripe.  We were given a couple of plants by our gardening association, late in the planting season.  We consider this a bonus.

And, for their beauty and a lot of cut flowers for the table, our zinnias.  

Some have blight on them. These don't. 

Speaking of zinnias, I wanted to tell a little story from mid-summer.  Next to our ground plot was a plot planted in okra and southern (we found out later, black eyed) peas.  Okra does not do well in our clime (it isn't hot enough for long enough).  We used to grow okra years ago when we lived in Arkansas (as much for the beautiful flowers as for the immature pods we eat) and southern peas, so I was familiar with the plants.

I wondered who planted this garden.  It wasn't your usual New York State garden.  It intrigued me.

One day, we found out.  A dark skinned woman, dressed head to toe in black, was working in the garden. We started to talk.  After we discussed her okra, which was not doing well, she looked at our zinnias.  Spouse had been cutting some as she arrived, and I was taking pictures.

She gestured at the plants.  She spoke English but I don't think it was adequate for her thought.  From her gestures, I decided she was asking me what crop the flowers were.  In other words, she thought the zinnias were the flowers of a food crop she wasn't familiar with.

I told her no crop, we don't eat any of the plant or its roots; we just grow these for beauty.

After we left, I thought about that.  Was this a foreign concept to this woman,  growing something for beauty and no food value?  What hardships had this woman faced, and maybe was still facing, that made a flower bed exotic?  Or maybe she had never seen a zinnia before.

It made me think.  I still wonder which it was.

Another lesson of the garden.