We have been harvesting such a lot from our garden lately.

This pic above was taken when the bounty was just beginning; when there were small zucchinis, and scant handfuls of beans. When I could pick a bunch of lemon verbena leaves and know that I would dry them carefully, not touching each other, and turning them often before laying them in a glass jar and screwing on the lid with a maternal satisfaction. A leisurely stroll in the garden meant picking a bunch of flowers, too, for the sheer joy of it, and for having beauty sitting about the house.

Now, however, our kitchen table more often than not looks like this:

What you see there in the pic are lebanese x parisian pickling cucumbers (we’ll cover that little slip up in another post…), mini white cucumbers, scarlett runner beans, avocadoes, nashi, baby corn, grapefruit, rhubarb and gadzooks. Or at least that’s what you say when a zucchini that size is suddenly sitting in your well-kept and genteel zucchini patch. These beauties are lebanese zucchinis, and we’re thinking of making a dugout canoe with the next one we find.

So that volume sitting on the table? That’s EVERY DAY, folks! What do you do with so many cucumbers?! I know, I’m totally blessed. This is what we always wanted, a garden that can feed us… but the learning what to do with it, and the total non-plussed feeling I get sometimes when I look at the combination of things coming into the kitchen and wonder ‘what do I make with all of THIS for dinner?’ is a little overwhelming sometimes.

That pile above is still sitting on my kitchen table as I speak, astounding me with the beauty and abundance that it represents. But also, a little guilt has started creeping in. What if I don’t get to it in time?

Harvest Storm, we’ve dubbed it, and to keep up we’re running as fast as we can.