Into the Jungle

There comes a time every year when the garden begins to scare me.  Last summer it was the massive drought that made it a frightening wasteland of vegetable devastation.  This year, massive rainfall and high temperatures have turned in into an intimidating and tangled jungle. 

Mr. Mersydotes and I hadn't visited the plot for about a week, and yesterday, this is what we were met with!  I almost fainted! 

Where did all the plants go?  Can you see a single gourd or tomato in that tangle?

I imagine that somewhere on this green Earth there is a well-ordered garden where veggies grown in rows and straw actually stops weeds from growing like, well, weeds!  But that garden is not to be found in our little corner of the Midwest!

After an hour or so of weeding with our machetes, here is what Mr. Mersydotes and I uncovered:

A hopeful jalapeno and a tenacious Thai pepper:

A concealed cucumber and flowering gourds:

Some subtly green cherry tomatoes as well as a future Cherokee purple tomato:

And here is a terrible photo of our tomatillo plant, which is the only garden resident unphased by the weather and growing even more exuberantly than the mugwort and pursilane.

Since this is the first year that I'm growing onions, I wasn't quite sure when to begin to harvest them, but since I saw some at the farmer's market this Saturday, I thought ours might be ready.  They're still a bit small, but we had them in our Thai stir-fry last night, and they were sweet and delicious!  And they smelled wonderful as I chopped them up for dinner!

If I might wax poetic for a moment, I'd just like to say, "Oh garden!  You are my greatest refuge and my greatest nemesis- whatever shall I do with you?!"

~Mersydotes