Garden Mysteries

So I was out there in the garden this morning in the "cool" of the day (not really as it is already 80 and supposed to go to 95 today) and I began to ponder several things.  Perhaps it was the heat affecting my brain, but a person does think about things all alone out there in the sunny garden.   Well, I wasn't really alone, as I had my garden buddy out there - my tom cat Pesto - but that's another story for later in this blog article.
     I was trying to pick tiny cucumbers for dill pickles.  My cucumber hills have grown into huge masses of plants, spread out in an area the size of Texas.  I would go through the plants and pick what I thought was 'everything'.   Then I get the idea that maybe I should go through the plants 'one more time' - and sure enough - there are more cucumbers!   Big ones, too!  I think:  how could I have missed those?   So I pick some more.  Of course by now my heat addled brain has decided that maybe I should go through the hills one more time again.   And would you believe there are MORE cucumbers??  Did I actually miss them the first two times around?  Am I that blind?  sigh.......I miss my grandson Jameson who was the champion "pickle-picker".   When he was about 8 years old he came to visit one summer and found baskets full of pickles that I had missed.    A person has to wonder how cucumbers can hide so well!
     Here's another mystery:  How can zucchini be only 2 inches long in the evening and grow to 10 inches long the next morning???  Can they really grow that fast?  If so, we need to extract whatever growth hormone is in zucchini and use that to cure baldness or something!
    And finally there is the mystery of how a cat's brain works.   Here  I am down on my knees pulling weeds, hands are filthy, I am sweaty, and irritable and my garden kitty decides it is time to rub against me, sit down right in my path, climb on my back, use my jeans as a "scratching post" and sit on top of tender plants and roll over on them yet!  (Pesto wiped out a whole stand of nice dill the other day doing that!) Garden kitty also plays with produce in the basket and knocks things out.   When I am walking back to the house with arms loaded with heavy baskets of veggies all carefully balanced so as not to fall out, garden kitty Pesto decides it's time to sit down right in my path and roll on his back, causing me to trip, and spill the baskets of veggies all over the place.  So I pick everything up, chase him away and yell, and he does the same thing about 100 feet later.   I tell you - there is no accounting for a cat's brain processes!  Some days Pesto is very well behaved.  But he is ALWAYS with me in the garden and greenhouse.  When I walk out of the house with baskets in hand, it's like he knows what the plan is.
     Well, time to can up those little dill pickles.....................I wonder.............should I go out and check the cucumber patch again??????