What a busy spring weekend we are going to have! Passover seders, Easter egg hunts, and farmers’ markets reopening. What a good time to get out of the house, while still being mindful of social distancing, please, and shake off the winter cobwebs. I can’t wait to eye the beautiful displays of vegetables and fruit, because this year I have realized that I am a very haphazard gardener. It’s time to come to grips and admit that I can only handle the decorative, and cannot be relied upon to provide actual nutrition: Daffodils, yes. Zucchini, no.
A few weeks ago I bought a couple of broccolini plants, because Mr. Sanders has taken to grilling store-bought broccolini on the weekends. It probably would have been sensible to do a little research before I made that impulse purchase; the small plants looked adorable and were irresistible. Now, they grown leggy, have tall, stalk-y bits covered with yellow flowers. I think I have let them go to seed already. There went $8 that I will never see again. I probably will be able to buy lots of locally grown broccolini later this season, from someone who knows what they are doing.
Every year I wander through the garden shops and envision beautiful tomato plants growing in the raised bed in our back yard, burgeoning with warm and aromatic crimson orbs, soon to be sliced on tomato sandwiches, or incorporated into fragrant and garlic-y tomato sauces. The grim reality is that I get busy, or indifferent to the weather, or have moved onto another project – look at those Adirondack chairs! They need a good coat of paint! There’s another weekend flown by. Consequently, I have never had a decent crop of tomatoes. Oh, last year I posted Instagram pics of the first tomato in mid-April, just to needle my friends in New England who were still shoveling snow, but the friends might not have noticed that I never posted another garden win for the rest of the growing season. (In reality they had probably stopped following me because they were fed up with my smug, petty humblebrags.) Later in the season, when I finally wrested a couple of wizened $25 tomatoes away from the birds and the nematodes, I did not whip out the iPhone to capture the moment. I am the unreliable narrator of my garden stories.
This year I am coming clean. I have planted a row of garlic, just as a personal science fair experiment. Otherwise, the entire raised bed is seeded with sunflowers and zinnias. A garden bed of sunflowers for Ukraine is my ambition this year. (My Instagram is https://www.instagram.com/jeanbeans/ if you want to see the first sunflower seedling, btw.)
In a small collection of containers by the back porch I have planted the aforementioned broccolini, some overpriced lettuces from the garden center, so I can sail down the back steps a couple of times to snip salad for dinner, and two mint plants so we will be ready for the Kentucky Derby. And there are there three humble basil plants, because we are a respectable middle-class family, and realize how wonderful fresh basil smells and tastes. But that’s it, the sum total of the 2022 garden. No tomatoes. No beans. No peppers. No zucchini. No lofty aspirations, or brag-worthy, IG-influencing state fair fruit or vegetables. We are going to be honest, responsible consumers, eager patrons of our farmers’ market, bringing our own public television tote bags, and buying organic. I hope to see you there.
Cambridge Farmers Market
May – October – Thursdays, 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Farmers’ Market at Long Wharf
https://downtowncambridge.org/farmers-market/
Chestertown Farmers’ Market
Saturdays, 8:00 AM to Noon
High & Cross Streets & Fountain Park
https://www.chestertownfarmersmarket.org
St. Michaels Farmers’ Market
Saturdays, 8:30 AM-11:30 AM
206 S. Talbot St., St. Michaels, MD, 21663
https://stmichaelsfarmersmarket.org
Easton Farm Market
Saturdays, April 16 – December 17, 8:00 AM-1:00 PM, Rain or Shine
100 Block of North Harrison Street, in the municipal parking lot
https://avalonfoundation.org/easton-farmers-market
Kent Island Farmers’ Market
Thursdays, 3:30 PM-6:30 PM, year round
Cult Classic Brewery, 1169 Shopping Center Rd. in Stevensville
https://www.kentislandfarmersmarket.net/
“And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.
Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.
And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.
And then everything dies anyway, right?
But you just keep doing it.”
― Anne Lamott
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