Protein

There's just something about growing a garden. Like I said before, it may be one of the coolest things I've ever done. Growing vegetables is sort of like a microversion of having kids. You think about planting them, you get all the stuff, you work on it/think about it every day, you watch them grow and go through stuff (sickness, bullies), and then, if all goes well, you cry your eyes out at their high school graduation because, look they did it. Only with kids you don't throw them into a stir-fry to celebrate. So, for my garden, here's a nice bit of info and a not-so-nice bit of info.

Nice first. I was concerned that my tomatoes may be rotting away. Several of them, especially the ones that are starting to turn red, had their bottoms rotting out. I went out in the dark to water them a few nights ago and thought I saw/felt a single worm dangling it's lower half out of the very center of all the bottoms. Those jerks! I was so mad. The next day, I decided those weren't worms, but instead were just the dried flower residuals. I wondered how these worms were managing to go one to a tomato right in the bottom center!!! (That's me- one class away from a botany minor. Genius.) Anyway, after good organic pesticide advice from the VanD's (thanks), I decided that what I actually needed was good general advice about tomato growing, so I called my dad. He's brilliant. Turns out I was watering them too much. He said the sun evaporates the water which then scalds the bottoms of the tomatoes causing them to rot. Awesome.

Now for the not-so-nice. I was sooo excited tonight to eat (and serve my family) our first broccoli crop. There was going to be enough for us each to have maybe one or two pieces each (I know, huge), but I was really excited. I brought the broc. inside, washed it, cut it up, threw it into one of those amazing ziploc steam bags, and into the microwave for a minute and a half. When I pulled it out it was greener than the Emerald City, and I was stuh-oked. I dumped the bag onto my plate. Turns out three or four caterpillars had gone in for the ride. I had to throw it all away. The caterpillars must've been well-buried in the florets, because I thought I did a stellar washing/inspection. The steam bath must've driven them out (kind of like me after, like, 2 minutes in the sauna). They actually looked kind of good resting on the verdant broc. All glow-y and plump. I'm kidding. Well, they did look glow-y and plump, but I mean... I wasn't going to eat them. I mean, come on.