Some folks know that I am addicted to the Twilight series of books.  Basically, they are about a girl’s experience with a family of vampires, including one vampire named Edward who is incredibly handsome, smart, charming, etc…you know, all the stuff that guys typically aren’t.  I read the books and saw the first movie.  Edward is indeed a dreamy bugger.  Fortunately, I am a married man and also have my secret weapon… 

I planted just shy of one ton of garlic last fall.  It seems that most of it has done very well and will be ready for harvest later this summer.  Garlic is so fun to watch grow.  It starts in the fall and shows itself but then dies back over winter.  Early in the spring though, you will see it poking back up through the dirt and by late spring, it produces large, hardy onion-like leaves.  In a month or so, it shoots up scapes full of little garlic seeds (if you let it go that far.  The scapes are good to eat on their own).  It sort of looks prehistoric to me.  Anyhow, prior to growing our own, we never really used garlic much.  Once you try fresh garlic, though, you’ll never go back.  We use it in everything.  We can with it, we cook with it.  We even bake heads of garlic in olive oil to make a quick and easy spread for on bread (pour olive oil in between the cloves that you separate slightly, leaving them still mostly attached.  Bake at 350 until they are tender…maybe 30 minutes…serve the  cloves with bread.  Once baked, they are spreadable).

All this food talk is nice, but the most important thig about garlic is it’s effect on vampires.  I wear garlic around my neck to ward off Edward Cullen and his ilk.  As much as I like Edward, I am pretty sure that I prefer my human form and plan to stay that way!  If you have a Twilight addiction like me, I recommend you plant some garlic this fall!