zucchini larceny 175a shirt. Cucumber and melon plants begin their lives with suburban re-
serve, posted discreetly apart from one another like houses in a new sub-
division, but under summer’s heat they sprawl from their foundations into
disreputable leafy communes. We gardeners are right in the middle of
this with our weeding and tying up, our mulching and watering, our
trained eyes guarding against bugs, groundhogs, and weather damage.
But to be honest, the plants are working harder, doing all the real produc-
tion. We are management; they’re labor.
The days of plenty suddenly fell upon us. On the same July 4 weekend
we pulled seventy- four carrots, half a dozen early onions, and the whole
garlic crop. (Garlic is fall- planted, braving out the winter under a cover of
straw.) We dug our first two pounds of gorgeous new potatoes, red- skinned
with yellow flesh. With the very last of the snap peas we gathered the ear-
liest few Silvery Fir Tree and Sophie’s Choice tomatoes, followed by ten
more the next day. Even more thrilling than the tomatoes were our fi rst
precious cucumbers—we’d waited so long for that cool, green crunch.
When we swore off transported vegetables, we’d quickly realized this
meant life without cukes for most of the year. Their local season is short,
and there’s no way to keep them around longer except as pickles. So what
if they’re mostly just water and crunch? I’d missed them. The famine
ended July 6 when I harvested six classic dark green Marketmores, two
Suyo Longs (an Asian variety that’s serpentine and prickly), and twenty-
five little Mini Whites, a gourmet cucumber that looks like a fat, snow-
white dill pickle. The day after tomorrow we would harvest this many
again. And every few days after that, too, for a month or more, if they
didn’t succumb to wilt and beetles. Cucumbers became our all- day, all-
summer snack of choice. We would try to get tired of them before winter.
A pounding all- day rain on the seventh kept me indoors, urging me to
get reacquainted with my desk where some deadlines were lurking
around. When evening came, for a change, I was not too worn out from
garden labor to put time into cooking up a special meal. We used several
pounds of cucumbers and tomatoes to make the summer’s fi rst gazpacho,
our favorite cold soup, spiced with plenty of fresh cilantro. To round out
the meal we tossed warm orzo pasta with grated cheese, lots of fresh-
picked basil, and several cups of shredded baby squash. After three