Every single time I utter the words “farmers market” in our house, the Man yells “Seven Blushing Maidens!” which is the short version of  “seven blushing maidens selling three heads of lettuce”.  This is how he used to describe the UBC Farm Market; every time we would got there with our small kids, there would be a huge line up of people competing to buy the small quantities of vegetables that they had available. For some reason, there always seemed to be excessive numbers of young, beautiful people working (or perhaps volunteering?) at the market.

Today I visited the UBC Farm Market* to see what they had in season. They had a great selection including all types of greens and lettuces, carrots, beets, radishes and herbs. As always, they had a blackboard that listed the items that had sold out, and the time they had sold out. I think this is great advertising, and motivates people to get there a little earlier the following week to get the potatoes and eggs. This week I bought three things that I was unsuccessful at growing in my garden: radishes, zucchini, and beets, all of it flawless.

The one thing that stopped me in my tracks was the garlic. The bulbs were perfect and enormous, and induced pangs of garlic envy. When I mentioned my garlic envy to the maiden standing nearby, she suggested that perhaps I had grown a different species of garlic than the type they had there. I almost bought one because it was so perfect and huge – almost the size of a turnip – but then I remembered my small, wormy specimens drying out the the garage, and left the perfect garlic for someone else to buy.

…

Today’s mission is to either move my pink peony or to shovel out the compost bin or both.

*I rode there on my bike. I deserve extra points for that.