Celery Abundance

We have officially had our first abundance of a crop!!  I planted celery seeds last June.  And let me just tell you, they are the tiniest seeds, so there were a LOT that went into the dirt! At first, I thought they were duds.  And then a long time later, they started looking like weeds.  I wasn't sure what to do so I left them.  They were in the middle of a tomato/snap pea/cucumber/cantaloupe patch so they were quite crowded.  Well, they grew up to be celery.  We were able to start harvesting last September.  It's been the one crop that I've been able to quantify our savings with.  We generally buy one bunch of celery per week or so (probably 3 per month).  From our farmer's market that's $3 per bunch or $9/month.  So we've been saving $9/month since September.
In December it seemed like the crop was waining.  We haven't studied up much on celery so we weren't sure what to expect.  Have actually been wanting to pull it out to get ready for the tomatoes for this upcoming season (it's the perfect tomato growing place in the garden!).  So Mike cut a bunch of it out, thinking that would be our last batch.  Wrong!!  It came back with a vengeance.  So I finally got around to thinning it out again and came up with 5 full bunches - way too much to eat at once (and by the way, $15 worth of celery!)   And believe me, there is PLENTY left in the ground!
So we decided to share with our gardening neighbors and gave two bunches away.  We spent two hours visiting with the two neighbors we shared with and came home feeling just wonderful.  It was really nice to share a bounty with others (for once) and it got us to randomly socialize...just like they used to!!

I got home and realized just how fitting this was.  The celery is the one crop (besides Parsley) that is still growing strong from my original plantings last June.  And this week marks the one year anniversary of losing Liliana.  So Liliana's garden fed other families this week.  It made me feel really good to know that although she is not here, she lives on.  She really does ;-)