Our tour through our friends’ garden left Molly and me speechless last night, mostly because we were chewing on all of the delicious goodies it produced.
In a leafy neighborhood full of fat rabbits and determined hobby horticulturists, this box garden looked like the Taj Mahal.
An electric fence surrounded wooden sections of gorgeous herbs, vegetables and fruits, including eight varieties of tomatoes. As our own gardening efforts have suffered dramatically this summer, what with all of the fun we’ve been having, we made our way through these well-planned plots like tourists at Epcot Center’s “Living with the Land.”
To our left lay fat summer squash, to our right strings of green beans and throughout grew all manner and size of colorful tomatoes.
Jacqui, our tour guide and master gardener, apologized that her tomatoes had overtaken some of her less aggressive plants.
“I wish our weeds were tomatoes,” said an awestruck Molly.
Sadly, our own prickly weeds yield nothing but scratches and hover menacingly over our one potato plant, one shallot, two renegade corn stalks, a couple of celery plants and a bumper crop of cilantro.
Technical difficulties prevented us from snapping shots of our own garden, mainly because after returning from our friends’ garden we didn’t even have the heart to peek at ours.
Our generous hosts sent us home with a couple varieties of peppers, tomatoes, kale, lavender, savory, potatoes, beans and a stalk of basil so large Molly had to hold it in her lap.
We’ll enjoy this last week of summer even more as we savor its fruits and the generosity of talented gardeners and friends.
