Published: August 14, 2007 11:07 pm         

My garden overfloweth with veggies — and rewards

The season for unloading excess garden vegetables is in full swing, so watch out.

If you come anywhere near my house, you won’t get away without a zucchini. And if you’re looking to unload some of your own cucumbers or green beans on me, don’t even bother. I have too many already.

It’s a wonderful feeling to be, for the first time, a vegetable giver as well as a taker. Last year, I received a gift of rhubarb from my next-door neighbor, and I felt bad that I had nothing presentable from my garden to offer in return. Even the pie I made from the rhubarb came out wet and not fit for sharing.

This year, I have an abundance of veggies to give away. I sent my mother home with a whole grocery bag of produce from the garden this weekend.

Even so, my vegetable drawer is still stuffed with zucchini, and I’m just about out of creative ideas for cooking with it. I’ve made zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, grilled zucchini, sauteed zucchini, pureed zucchini, zucchini in vegetable soup, zucchini in lasagna, and shredded zucchini hidden in spaghetti sauce. Next up is stuffed zucchini and maybe even a strange recipe I found on the Internet for a zucchini pie that’s supposed to taste just like apple pie.

Though I’m sick of the flavor of zucchini, I’m not sick of the plants. I like the routine of pushing back the big shady leaves and spiny stalks of the zucchini plants to see what’s hiding underneath. I like checking on the little zucchinis every few days to see when they’re ready to harvest. And I like the thrill of finding a gigantic zucchini hidden in the garden, even though it’s probably too big to taste good.

The cucumbers have been fun in the garden, too. I planted everything too close together, of course, so every few days I have to fight back the cucumber vines and unwind tendrils from the nearby tomato plants and green bean plants. I still enjoy doing this, even though the cucumbers are now coming in yellow and have turned bitter. The fun is not the eating; it’s playing with the plants.

It’s also fun to be part of the gardening exchange. Because I have vegetables to give away this year, I have a different perspective on the dynamics of sharing.

It’s certainly a gift to get a fresh sweet pepper or an unusual eggplant from a gardener friend, but it’s also a gift to have somebody accept a pile of zucchini that would otherwise go unused. It’s a surprising pleasure of gardening that I never anticipated.



Julie Kirkwood’ writes for The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Mass. Reach her via e-mail at jkirkwood@eagletribune.com.