🌿 The Harvest Is Only the Beginning

Hi friends,

This week I found monarch caterpillars feeding on the milkweed beneath my grapevines, and for a moment I was a kid again. I remembered the little jar on our kitchen counter that held a monarch caterpillar we watched transform into a butterfly. We fed it fresh milkweed, watched the chrysalis form, and eventually carried the butterfly outside and let it go. Milkweed and dandelion greens were also among the wild foods we gathered when I was young, so I learned early that one plant could hold more than one kind of value.

Last year I planted milkweed beneath my grapevines. This year it flourished, and finding monarch caterpillars living there reminded me of something simple: sometimes we have to give a little up to allow something else to continue. Leave some milkweed for the monarchs. Let a few beans stay on the vine long enough to become next year’s seed. Return something to the soil. Take care of the tools that helped produce this year’s harvest so they are ready for the next one.

Sometimes taking a little less today is exactly what allows the garden to give back tomorrow.

That is also how I have started thinking about the September harvest. Instead of asking only, “Is this ready to pick?” I am trying to ask, “What is the best next use for what the garden has given me?” Dinner may be the answer, but so might preservation, seed, another season of growth, or simply leaving something where it is because it still has another job to do.

That question became the heart of my newest harvest article, where I look at five September vegetables many of us are harvesting right now and what each one can become next.

A few monarch caterpillars reminded me this week that abundance isn’t always measured by how much we take from the garden. Sometimes it is measured by what we preserve, what we return, and what we leave behind so life can continue.

See you in the garden,
Karel 🌻

P.S. Did you leave something in your garden this year for another season, for wildlife, or because it had another purpose? Reply and tell me. If you have a picture, send that too. I’d love to see it.