The Nature of Things

The beautiful weather we've had recently, featuring sunny days with relatively cooler temperatures and low humidity, have given me the gardening bug once again. I've been busy in the garden, cleaning up, moving some plants and taking out some that succumbed to the summer heat or to disease, but what I really wanted to do was to plant a vegetable garden. At the time that spring planting of vegetables was under way, I was a bit under the weather and never really got to do very much. The little that I did is mostly long gone now, except for the banana peppers, jalapeños, basil, and a few other herbs. The sweet banana peppers are still going strong.      The African blue basil is at its best as we head into autumn. Though I missed out on most of the spring gardening season, the truth is that fall is really the best time to garden here in our zone 9a. In spring, summer arrives much too soon with its oppressive heat and humidity. It soon wilts both the garden and the garde...

As a vegetable gardener, I am very familiar with that time every summer when the garden suddenly is bursting with produce of all kinds. It comes quicker than it can possibly be used, but so much effort, sweat, and backaches have gone into the production of the veggies that the gardener is loathe to let even one fruit slip through the cracks. And so the search is on for recipes and ways to use up or to preserve the produce. This week in my garden, it's been the squash, especially the zucchini, that has been coming fast and furious. Anyone who has ever grown zucchini will understand very well what I mean. The fruits come on in a rush and they can grow to gigantic proportions almost overnight. In some years the squash borers, an insidious insect that destroys the stalk of the squash plant and thus its life, get to the plants before they have a chance to produce very much - or sometimes, any - fruit. But, for whatever reason, perhaps our colder than usual winter, the squash borer...