The Minnesota Farm Woman

I’m a planner. Some of my most important plans are made while sitting in a comfortable chair, cup of coffee in hand, paper and pencil or laptop computer in front of me and just let my imagination lead the way.  Every year I make gardening plans. Big, grandiose blue-ribbon gardening plans.  The I-planted-too-many-pumpkins-and-not-enough-rutabagas kind of gardening plans. Each and every year, I plan for a huge, thriving weed-free garden.  It is always huge. It is sometimes thriving. It is never weed-free. I had special plans for one corner of the garden this year.  Broccoli would be planted first.  Broccoli is one of our favorite vegetables to eat fresh, but it freezes well, too, so I planted 24 seedlings, which is more than enough for both.  When the broccoli was done, I had plans to pull up the spent plants,  re-till the area and throw in some lettuce seeds for fall salads.  I did get plenty of broccoli, and I was pleased that my plans were working out.  We had some to eat, some to give to friends, and some to freeze.  Some people say that for them, time seems to stand still in the garden.  For me, time always runs out.  While I was busy with other projects, the broccoli started bolting, and there was a mass of bright yellow flowers, which the bees absolutely loved.  There were literally hundreds of the little critters hovering around those flowers, drinking in the nectar and also pollinating my tomatoes, beans, squash, and pumpkins. I couldn’t pull up the broccoli for fear of getting stung.  Later, while I was busy harvesting, canning, and freezing the rest of the garden, the yellow flowers started turning into seed pods, but I had too much to do to take the time to pull them up.  It is now October, and we’ve already had our first snow, which stayed on the ground a couple of days.  I am on vacation, so now have time to pull up those spent  plants and get things cleaned up.  The snow is gone, and surprisingly enough, my vacation days are coinciding with some warm sunny autumn days.  I entered my dead-looking brown garden, but not with any sadness, as you might expect. It was a very productive year, and I am ready to rest.  There are a few frost-bitten tomatoes on the ground and a couple of tiny heads of cabbage which never grew to maturity due to the pumpkin apocalypse. There are dried pods of beans still hanging, which I may pick and make into a pot of bean soup.  There are a few carrots left to dig, which will be all the sweeter for the frosts that we have had.  In the middle of that brown spent garden, I was surprised to see that my broccoli plants were still an oasis of green, although they are more than four feet tall and covered with thousands of seed pods. Each pod contains many seeds. Each seed will grow into a broccoli plant. I tossed a bucketful of the pods to the chickens, and they gobbled them up quickly, making that happy “I’ve got a treat” sound that they make when they discover something special.  As I started stripping the pods, I discovered something special myself. Growing from the bottom of each plant were more small heads and shoots of broccoli! I picked a handful for dinner, and there are still more to come, so I won’t pull them yet. I will gather all the seed pods, saving some for sprouting, some for chicken feed, and some to start seeds for next year’s crop.  This time I’m glad that the best laid plans didn’t quite work out quite the way I had planned.