Outside Things

Summer is here--full-bore and not looking back to lovely, perfect spring. I talked to Shaanti last Monday and was complaining that it was already 95 outside, then she said it was 55 in Meridian. Can we not clearly see a happy medium for everyone at about 75, 80?


Still, when summer hits all the outside things start creeping onto our deck and onto our counter and into our fridge, and I love that. I love summer when we are looking for lettuce for hamburgers and can just go pull it out of the ground, which is what we've been doing lately--lovely, perfect heads of lettuce, more arugula than you can shake a stick at, snow peas popping up on the vines, and little tomatoes forming nicely.


This year in our garden we planted: green onions (which hardly came up. So disappointed), carrots, radishes (all long eaten), Ithaca head lettuce, green beans, spinach, arugula, leeks (which appear to have completely died), summer squash (those little acorn shaped ones that are perfect for stuffing with goat cheese), four kinds of tomatoes, and snow peas. Oh, and potatoes. First time for those.


Ours aren't the only green things coming up--we took our first visit to the farmers market last weekend and came home with asparagus and absolutely perfect strawberries, and our CSA finally started up. Last year's farmer decided not to do a CSA this year, so it's a bit like starting fresh and not knowing what to expect...though another pint of perfect strawberries was included with the first share, which definitely started us off on the right foot!