Delayed Gratification

Vegetable gardening is an excellent lesson in delayed gratification. Planting a tomato seed means you'll eat a tomato in three months, not in three hours when you next get to the grocery store. If you're thinking that's a long damn time to be waiting for a tomato . . . well, you're right. But it is also SO WORTH IT when you eat one of those grown-from-seed tomatoes.

Yesterday we had the extreme gratification of eating asparagus from our garden. The eating of the asparagus was also extremely delayed. Asparagus isn't harvested for the first two years after it's planted, to give the plant time to establish itself. So the past two years we've watched those delicious spears come up out of the ground and grow into big, feathery asparagus trees. Beautiful, yes, but I really wanted to be eating the asparagus, not admiring it.

This year, the third year, we can harvest the asparagus for about two weeks. It produces continuously, until it's allowed to grow into the feathery trees, which it always is eventually. Mature asparagus can be harvested for an eight-week period. Our immature asparagus can only handle a couple of weeks of continuously being chopped down. Because of the crazy warm weather we had over the Easter weekend, the asparagus got a jump-start this year and I spied the first tips poking through the dirt last weekend. I got all excited, because everyone says asparagus grow so quickly you can hardly keep up. Everyone says they grow to maturity in one day.

Everyone wasn't counting on our nights in the thirties.

So I waited and I waited and I checked those asparagus spears every day. They grew slowly, not appreciating the cold nights and cool days we've been having. But finally, we ate the first asparagus last night. And you know what? TOTALLY WORTH WAITING FOR.