Susan in the garden with her mosquito net.

By Susan Shanklin

It’s so close to August I can almost touch it and the garden is increasing to the point that I don’t know which vegetables to eat at each meal!

Tom’s ever favorite vegetable to eat at breakfast is eggplant, A lightly sprayed pan with slices of eggplant sprinkled with salt, pepper and garlic steamed to perfection sided with eggs and toast.

Lunch is a toss up of everything else, and whatever you don’t eat at noon you will surely eat at dinner!

Salads are pretty easy, mixed with Romaine lettuce, young kale and beet leaves and young cucumbers. Snip some cilantro and basil and toss with rice vinegar and olive oil and seasonings. That’s what you call a mouth-watering explosion of goodness.

Young zucchini and yellow patty pan summer squash are fast—just steamed with the salt, pepper and garlic to accompany the salad sided with good old left overs from last nights dinner.

Evenings, usually I save some broccoli and/or Roma beans to be matched with new potatoes and more squash or greens.

Another fav of Tom’s is steamed beet greens. In fact I freeze them in tiny packs to serve during the crisp Minnesota winter. Lately I have been tossing in some kale just because it’s there.

Strawberries are long gone now, but 15 gallons are tucked away in the freezer waiting to be un-treasured when the ground is white and nose hairs freeze. Somehow, the two thoughts (strawberries and nose hairs) don’t go together. But you get the picture, ha, especially if you live up here!

More crushed strawberries are measured and bagged for jam making. Now we don’t wait until winter for these. Nope, jam is for eating and eating and eating, now.

Strawberries are a wonderful joy and a sweet treat, but they are work. Oh, not a ton, but they are work. You plant, wait a year, weed, winter cover, weed and wait till one day you come in the house and say, “I got ONE strawberry!”

Grandma’s helper in the strawberry patch.

The next day you say, “I got two strawberries,” until one day you don long pants, an oversized shirt, hat, bug spray, and maybe a mosquito net.  Then with large bowls you are bending over, swatting mosquitoes, stretching and straddling strawberry plants picking the precious fruit for future winter joy.

I’m hot, I’m buggy. My back starts to hurt and I look down the 5 foot by 60 foot patch and cringe.

“Oh, I have soooooo far to go. This is taking forever, I think, “I want to quit. This is taking soooooooo long!”

I would start out fine. Excited in fact! But not too long in the process I was getting overwhelmed. “This is so hard!” I kept telling myself. I kept telling myself. I kept telling myself…

Then, I stood up one day arching my sore back and looked at what I HAD picked! “Wow!” I said. Then I picked a little further and looked back and said, “Wow I’ve come so far!” The next time I took a short break, I was finishing the second side of the strawberry patch, seeing that I had picked almost 3/4 the of the patch. I was allllllmost done!

It’s the reverse of the half glass theory.

I was so focused on the end of the patch and all the work that remained to be done that I had overwhelmed myself from the start.

Sometime we forget how far we have come.  Sometimes we forget the successes, the accomplishments we have made.

So, pat yourself on the back and say, “Wow, I did THAT!” And keep going. You will finish your patch and it will be delicious.

Berry Good!

The garden earlier this summer.