Of course, I’m still vacillating between chuckling inwardly that my green fruit recipe won a final spot at the Red Fruit Fest and OHMYGODIMGONNABEONSTAGEWITHAFAMOUSCHEF!!!!!1111.

Heh. Wow.

I’d like to say I’ll miss the tomatoes but I won’t. I’ve been eating them all summer and I’m ready for something new. Based on the sheer volume of cowhorns and jalapeños, I’m pretty sure that something new will be pretty spicy.

Le Bumblebee: Quelle est? Ah, le belle femme fleur fatale. How is it that she can sleep when I am so near? We must stoke the furnace of love, must we not?
Le Fleur: Le mew. Le purrrr.
Le Bumblebee: This little love bundle. Now she is seeking for us a trysting place. Touching, is it not? Come, my little peanut of brittle. I will help you.

Le Bumblebee (caressing Le Fleur tenderly): You are ze corned beef to me, and I am ze cabbage to you!

Le Bumblebee (intoxicated with the scent of Le Fleur, buries his head in her pistils): I pierce you with the ack-ack of love, flowerpot. Ah, there ees very little difference between men and women. But.. VIVE LE DIFFERENCE!!

Radicchio has definitely been the most successful of my greens grown in containers. It never wilts, has no pests and grows back quite rapidly after harvest. It was happy with a minimum of watering and equally as happy during a week of thunderstorms. If you’re a fan of truly bitter greens (as I am), trying being a little stingy with the water – a little dryness contributes to the bitterness factor.

If I had to pick something to hold against it, perhaps I’d mention that it doesn’t really fare well during hot DC summers.

Eh, something to look forward to in fall, right?

I noticed a week ago that the radicchio I planted last fall had finally begun to send up twin antenna towers. I figured it was about due to bolt but I didn’t expect such delicate purple flowers from such a bitter, hardy green. If you look closely, you can see their tiny purple eyelashes.

Heh. Not this year, no sir! 2010 ain’t no punk@ss moderate year, content with soft breezes and gentle temperature fluctuations.

Nope, 2010 is the year that announced, “I’m gonna be different! I’m gonna dump more snow on the city than it’s seen in over 100 years. I’m gonna be really freakin’ cold and then I’m gonna be really freakin’ hot. Not hot like “Hey Koolaid!”-hot. Hot like fry-an-egg-on-the-nice-flat-hood-of-an-old-Jeep-Cherokee-Classic-hot. Now that’s HOT.”

In concrete terms, it means we’ve had one rainstorm in the most recent three week period. And we’d already hit 39° C/100° F-plus temperatures by late June. LATE JUNE. It ain’t even August yet.

Fortunately, my current addiction to triathlon has revealed a solution to being hot and sticky: getting more hot and sticky. After all, if I’m hot just sitting around the apartment, imagine how much cooler I will feel after baking for an hour or two in the hot sun on a bike/run training brick?

Now, if I were a tomato plant who sat in full sun all day, I might feel differently. I might feel like I was being just a tad whiny about the temperature indoors in the shade. I would probably counsel myself to be a little more grateful – at least, I had shade. Shade which I wouldn’t have if I were a tomato plant. Which, of course, I’m not. No, quite fortunately, I’m not a tomato plant who sits in full sun all day; rather I’m merely the morning and evening waterbearer.

Which brings me back to beans. On last night’s watering foray, I noticed little green bean sprouts poking up through the dirt. Hence this morning’s pictures. It’s the same Dragon’s Tongue bean I planted earlier in the year – if you look closely at the picture below, you can see tiny purple flecks in the veins of the baby leaves.

It is the quintessential scent of summer for me – sweeter and more vegetable than basil, cleaner and more refreshing than mint, and stronger than pretty much any other vegetable in the backyard. It’s also the cheapest time machine I own – nothing transports me back to growing and picking tomatoes in my grandmother’s backyard faster than the smell of tomatoes.

I learned today that my favorite summer smell doesn’t come from the fruit itself but from these tiny little hairs, aka “glandular trichomes.” According to this article, that strong summer scent doesn’t just smell good, it also protects the plant in various ways from various insect and pathogenic attackers.

Fortunately, it’s not terribly effective against gardeners.