LIFE WILL FIND A WAY--Michael Crichton--Jurassic Park

When we made plans this year to help at a summer camp, I purposefully decided to plant no seeds in my garden plot so there would be nothing to care for while we were away. 

Except for the roses, most of my garden area is filled with perennial native plants which only need to be weeded, watered and thinned.  So, except for the combat with bindweed and grasses, it is pretty low maintenance.

It was a surprise, therefore, to find squash and tomato plants growing away in the empty place where my vegetables usually grow.  No one had planted them.  The tomatoes had probably volunteered from those which grew last summer in the same location and the squash must have grown from seeds which sat in the dirt a whole year before deciding to grow.

Both tomatoes and squash need a long, frost-free summer to produce so, unless we don’t get our usual cold snap in September, the vegetables won’t have time to mature.  Still it does prove how nature hates a vacuum.

We also discovered a bountiful crop of black currants waiting to be picked.  The currant bushes were a gift from a thoughtful son-in-law several years ago and this summer the bushes were loaded with fruit.

We didn’t have time or really enough of a harvest to make currant jelly so we just cleaned them (a labor intensive job which can be done while watching a video) let them dry on a cookie sheet…

…and then froze them in snack bags to be used later to flavor food like smoothies, muffins and hot breakfast cereal.