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It's great to be home, and not just because the veggie garden is bearing fruit!  Nonetheless, it was very, very nice to go down to the plot and survey the miracles.

There are tomatoes on the way.

The plants were donations from the public gardens greenhouses, so we don't know what varieties to expect.  I deliberately chose plants with different leaves, though.  

Zucchinis galore.

Beans being babies.

We even dug up some garlic!  I'm very excited about that.

The radishes had bolted! It's amazing.  We pulled up the enormous, woody-stemmed plants.  There were radish-looking things at the base of many of them.  We'll see what they taste like later.

I also picked some more green onions.  They're not obviously minding being very close-packed.  I think I'll enjoy eating lots of little tender baby spring onions instead of proper-sized bunching onions.  

The potatoes are flowering and looking very promising.  After the success of last year's potatoes, I can't wait for the first creamy bite of fresh potato this summer.  

I pulled up a few of the beets to make room for their neighbours.  I'll make beet greens out of their leaves; there isn't really enough beet on most of them to be worth cooking.  

A few years ago, I had edible beet greens for the first time.  I had previously always treated beet greens like spinach and as a result hated them and stopped trying to eat them.  Then my own dear and wise mother showed me the way and I've been an enormous beet green fan ever since. Remember that this is a recipe for people who like to eat food because it tastes good.  This isn't for a purist who wants to extract the maximum amount of vitamins from their vegetables.  

Beet Greens:

Wash the greens thoroughly (rinse at least 3 times, more if the water is still sandy).  Toss the undried greens into a pot with a heavy bottom and a lid.  Let them cook down in the water that was clinging to them.  Cover them and stir frequently, making sure that the leaves don't stick.  Boil the heck out of them.  Boil them until the stems are starting to be properly limp (more limp than you'd want your asparagus, but less limp than spaghetti) and then take the lid off.  Add butter (let's guess about a teaspoon per 1/2 lb of greens) and minced garlic and let the water boil off, stirring all the while.  You should be left with a lovely buttery red sauce and delicious beet greens.  I sometimes add the garlic while there is quite a lot of water remaining in the pot, which basically allows me to add several cloves without anyone noticing much because the boiling makes the garlic a little more mild, but it infuses the sauce more, too.