Garden Treasures

Rhiannon and I set out to Arlington to eat at a strange little place called the Mirkwood & Shire Cafe. It's a strange little Middle Earth themed all vegetarian cafe, which also has various Middle Earth themed businesses nestled within it. It houses local emo kids and their bands, sells New Age trinkets, and often you'll find people gathered to play Magic the Gathering with one another. All in all, a strange place, but it's a fun venue to be a fly on the wall and watch.

Given that it's strawberry season, we decided to stop at a farm stand along the way. We looked at the produce and decided there was nothing we really wanted. We strolled around the plant section for a bit and then came across an invitation to stroll through the fields.

We noticed people picking strawberries, so we decided to head inside and find out about the "U-Pick" program. The guy manning the stand took us over to a set of baskets and asked us what we wanted to get. We thought strawberries were the only option, but he told us there were a lot of other things in the field we could harvest. He lead us out to the fields and motioned to the right side of the acre. "There's not much out there, a lot of greens. Over there are cucumbers, raspberries, chard, carrots, onions. Grab whatever you want!"

We were both suddenly thrilled; this wasn't a field of strawberries, this was an acre of farm land with rows and rows of everything we'd been buying at the farmers' markets, but here it was in situ, waiting to be picked. No chaperone, no restrictions, we were just set loose.

Now, not having a garden of my own, I'm sure that this feeling will just make those with gardens chuckle, but it was great to get out there and see these things in the fields. I didn't grow up with gardening, so while I know vegetables on the shelf, I didn't know them here. And better than a garden that we'd grown ourselves, we didn't know what was out there. Every row of plants held something new.

We didn't really need anything, but it was pretty hard not to grab a gorgeous zucchini with its blossom still on. I had no idea the blossoms attached the way they did.

We went row by row, picking cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, garlic and onions. It didn't really matter that some of it wasn't ready, it was just very satisfying to pull up a head of garlic from ground, shake loose the dirt and snap off its upper leaves. The smell from the cut vegetation made my mouth water.

In the end our bounty only cost us $9.50, but it was far more fun than going to the market ever had been, and now the urge to have a garden has really started to take root, pardon the pun. We'll be back next weekend to check out their tomatoes coming into season and their raspberries which weren't quite ripe yet.

We brought it all home and got to work on using it. That's another post.