Indispensable

This spring the rabbits ate all my parsley seedlings, so I let the bed go to kale, and decided have a summer without parsley. Most years I grow it in abundance. All other things equal, I like life better with lots of fresh parsley than without. It's interesting, though, to dispense with something indispensable for a while.

Last year, I did without cucumbers in the garden. I don't remember why. Maybe so I'd take more joy in them this year. They're my breakfast of choice right now, still scratchy, pulled from the vines before work and eaten whole. I still like beit alpha types best. This year, I grew Mideast Peace cucumber from Adaptive Seeds, and they're good- beit alpha types usually are. I have a soft spot for pickle little pickling cucumbers, too, but I never grow them and don't ever seem to miss them.

If I'm not in a hurry, I like to eat my cucumbers while I walk around the front yard and see who else is there and what they're doing. It's interesting to see who loves what: the hunter wasps swarming the culver's root and mountain mint, the little bees on the blue vervain, the big bees on the hoary vervain, the wild senna that just bloomed and no one is paying any attention to. This was all grass a year or two ago, and I'm proud of these new little spaces, even though a bit unkempt and not elegantly designed. They bring me to far corners of my yard and teach me something.