TMZ Season

I have seen the future and it looks like salad.

Early this morning I went to the garden and picked a big firm head of crispy lettuce, a handful of cherry tomatoes, some cute little cucumbers and lovely little yellow summer squash, a few heads of broccoli, and enough zucchini to feed all the starving people in the world. It won't do any good to take the zucchini to the Farmers' Market because everyone has too much zucchini right now. You might call this Too Much Zucchini Season.

The tomatoes are still a little slow thanks to the dry weather, but there are plenty of green ones out there and if they all ripen at once, we'll have bushels. There' s no such thing as Too Many Tomatoes--as long as there's room in the deep freeze. I notice that we still have some sweet corn in there from last year's bumper crop, which is good because this year's corn crop is pretty puny. First the ground was too cold and then it was too dry, so the little bit of corn that came up looks stunted, with ears hanging low to the ground like a buffet set out for the raccoons and other small woodland creatures. We'll be lucky to get a dozen ears.

In the herb garden, the sage and thyme are doing great and the lemon basil is growing so quickly that I have to pinch off dozens of buds every day (which makes my hands smell luscious), but the other basil plants and the rosemary seem utterly uninterested in growing. Maybe they're sulking.

The hollyhocks out front got flattened by a sudden storm and have not responded well to being staked up. They're still standing, but they look like refugees huddling together after some devastating natural disaster. It doesn't help that the Japanese beetles have turned their leaves all lacy. I need to learn a little something about hollyhocks before next summer.

Meanwhile, I think I hear a salad calling.