For six summers, we have blindly thrown our trust into nature’s ability to produce full-grown vegetable plants out of nothing but seeds and sprouts.

We have counted on having lettuce and peppers and zucchini and tomatoes. We have counted the radishes and bathed in carrots. We have rearranged our yard, moving rocks and laying railroad ties and creating gardens where there once was none.

Yet, every year, part of our trust is bashed. Thrown against the chain link fence. Stomped on by steel cleats. Dug out with a trowel and left to wither in the sun, to be chopped up in lawn mower, to decompose back into the earth.

And as decomposed plants turn into the minerals that ultimately help new growth, our trust is always renewed, with each new spring serving as a kind of Green Thumb Aphrodisiac, convincing us that, yes, once again, we can do this; pests and drought and blight and attention be damned!

I’m talking about our garden. And this year, it’s fighting for its life.

Not all of it, mind you. There are always parts of the garden that will succeed despite the pests that attack it. The radishes always sprout and are plentiful, the cucumbers will continue to grow, the tomatoes are planted in abundance to guarantee at least a small harvest. But others always seem to be foiled.

Ask our peas, which this year (in the middle of a strong sprouting) were picked over by birds. Or our beets, which last year suffered from a lack of water and this year suffer from a lack of, well, a top (the birds are to blame, again.) Some seeds have always been too deep. Others, regardless of the fence or whirligig flowers, are picked over by the neighborhood pests – the rabbits and birds that are only safe because we haven’t purchased a bb gun and (more importantly) because a child has moved in across the yard.

It sounds dire, but it’s typical. We are gung ho about the opening of garden season, but see our attention wane as the days become hotter, as we become accustomed to waiting, as we see the plants seemingly doing well on their own.

The tomatoes will flourish, as always. The cucumbers will grow, and we will be pickling long throughout the summer. We have a hint of lettuce. And, naturally, we have more radishes than we know what to do with.

I didn’t make it to the Farmer’s Market this Saturday – Kerrie and her mom and Sierra made the trip without me, as I stayed behind to get some housework done. I do know that, upon their return, the holes in our garden were filled. Our weekly single kohlrabi root, a plethora of radishes, beets of two colors and more onions showed up at our door. At this rate, we’ll hardly miss the kale (and the beets, and the carrots, and the peas) that failed from our own garden.

Which means, as last week, more tasty salads, more egg salad with fresh onion, more radishes as snacks. Our haul:
Kohlrabi
Green onions
Red onions
Radishes
Beets
Yellow Beets

The replacement is okay. If anything, our garden will slowly transfer into a large tomato garden. Instead, we’ll just rely on someone else – someone more attentive, with nothing but our vegetables on our mind – to produce our crops.

In the meantime, we’ll just eat more radishes.

One thing that’s great about visiting the Farmers Market each week is the comfortableness that comes with recognizing return vendors. It’s the same feeling you get when you go to your neighborhood bar and the bartender starts mixing your drink, or when you go to the bakery and get a rousing hello from the staff.

It doesn’t happen often anymore – in my life, it hardly happens at all. So I enjoy each return acquaintance. Even if I never actually talk to them (which I don’t) they’re always there. Always selling the same stuff, always watching the same people browse through the same stock.

Like the people who sell aquatic plants, a niche market if there ever was one. They have water lilies and water lettuce and tons of things that would be useful if we had, you know, a pond.

This week I noticed that they sell carnivorous plants. Actual carnivorous plants. Like, Venus fly traps and pitcher plants and all of those crazy plants you thought only lived in the Amazon forests and couldn’t survive outside of an arid heat that produces the monster insects it needs to survive. But here they were – $10 a piece, ready to take home and plant next to your tomatoes.

(Which, by the way, probably isn’t the best place to plant them.)

Another welcome site – especially now that I’ve switched allegiances and joined the omnivore team – is the Goosemobile: a dark trailer filled with freezers, each lovingly stocked with free range, organic meats, from pork to beef, chicken to whatever parts are left over.

Kerrie buys eggs from the Goosemobile every once in a while, so it wasn’t a new experience by any means. But with the expanded menu, the Goosemobile – and the woman who keeps it alive – has reached a more prominent place on my radar. She sells nearly everything you could think of, and is proud to have never received a bad check. No, really. It’s right there on her order forms – she has never received a bad check. Ever.

In a time when most meats are handed out in spotless, sterilized butcher shops or the cold confines of the supermarket, it’s refreshing to find something like the Goosemobile – a full-service meat van, decorated with an array of country knick-knacks, with jellies and quilts adorning the outside tables and customers lining up to order a couple dozen eggs or free range chicken breasts. It’s friendly. Functional. Down-home, and perfect for the scene. She’s a mainstay at the Farmers Market, and I look forward to getting to know her.

Oh yeah – the CSA. We got many of the same veggies, with the addition of yellow beets. Last week’s veggies were used mainly in salads and muffins (we have rhubarb coming out of our ears, so thankfully that crop has petered out). We did use the onions in a phillo dough casserole that also included ricotta cheese and spinach. For this week, we’re looking at creative ways to use:
Kohlrabi
Green onions
Radishes
Lettuce
Beets
Yellow Beets

I’d add it to my organically raised, antibiotic-free, free range chicken breasts, but they won’t be in for another two weeks.

The Goosemobile, however, will be there next week. Just like it always has been. Just like it always will.