When I’m at home I hardly notice changes during a short period of time, but now being just back from two weeks away, there have been observable changes in common things around our town and neighborhood.
When we left the new community garden in Oak Way Park had small seedlings planted by the participants. Coming home the corn is almost four feet high, the string beans propped up by trellises or sticks, the tomatoes flowering or with nubs of green fruit, zucchini vines spreading out and eggplants and other veggies grown large. Soon there will be harvesting and fresh produce for the growers to eat, trade or share.
Then in the rice fields that were bare ponds two weeks ago, we saw greening, evidence of new shoots that will produce a harvest in late summer.
At home our raised beds where I had planted squash seedlings and potato seeds, I was amazed the potato already has sprouted flowers and I can look forward to digging our own potatoes when the leaves die back and they’re ready to harvest. Other seedlings that have matured include the tomatoes with yellow flowers on some vines and green nubs of fruits on others. We had not put baskets under the new seedlings and now the plants are so tall and large it’s been hard to prop them up. A surprise is the large leaves of the winter melon that I wasn’t sure the seeds would germinate. A friend had sent the seeds to me from her garden in her coastal town, and somehow they’d begun to grow next to the potato plant so it’ll be fun to dig under for potatoes and hopeful the melon that should grow as large as their cousin watermelons will be just above the ground to be picked.
There are probably many other changes that occurred during our two-weeks away, but even the small ones are a wonderment.
