Eternal Optimist

Gardening in Park City is a challenge to put it mildly. Especially when vegetables are involved. There aren't too many people with kitchen gardens. Justin has gardening in his blood and he isn't about to let an elevation of 6,500' stop him. His mother is a master gardener and has a beautiful vegetable garden. His maternal grandfather was renowned for his huge tomatoes. At his funeral in August, I heard a funny story about how he would take his enormous squash and draw faces on them and hide them in his wife's bed for her to find.

Justin has three small raised beds in the backyard and he has constructed plastic cold frames to go over two of them. Every year he attempts to grow tomatoes. He even goes to the Red Butte Garden plant sale just so he can get a Siberian tomato plant. This spring we learned that a Siberian tomato under a cold frame can still suffer frost damage. Luckily, the plant bounced back only to be faced with a frost in mid-August. This was our tomato harvest.

Not really worth the effort you think; am I right? If it were about eating tomatoes you would be right,but it's not. It's about the challenge and trying to outwit Mother Nature.

Luckily, our summer squash plant was a much better producer. Check out this puppy. I think it actually weighed more than Caddie when we brought her home.

The girls have dubbed it,

"The largest squash ever grown in a small garden in Park City."

Fortunately, we managed to pick the others when they were still a good size for eating. Squash is not one of the kids favorite vegetables, but they ate quite a bit of it. I even took to making summer squash casseroles and taking them to family parties. The squash pictured above is still sitting on my window sill and I think it's destined for our compost pile rather than our dinner table, but the girls were too proud of it to let me cook it. Besides, I think it probably would have been a bit tough.

Next spring my eternal optimist will be out in his garden with his walls of water, PVC pipes and plastic sheeting determined that it will be the year he gets a full fledged tomato crop. When he does I'll be more than happy to celebrate with some BLTs.