The Importance of Radishes

Success on the Short-Term

Radishes have become an important vegetable in our house of late.

Thanks for the picture, Walmart.com! A fitting source. We buy lots of food there.

Back in March, we started digging the weeds out of our backyard garden plot. The kids were thrilled about the idea of planting seeds and growing vegetables. I decided it was not a good time to tell them that I have never had what I would consider a successful garden. Once, about six years ago, I planted corn, naming each seed after a Star Wars character, as indicated by the mini popsicle stick next to it. It was CORN WARS! Half of the plot was Sith, and the other half were good guys, Obi-Wan Cornobi, Darth Kernel, and Qui Gon Corn among them. My favorite was Maize Windu.

I never found out who won the Corn Wars. Well, the July Hailstorm won the Corn Wars. And I lost motivation.

I didn’t have super high hopes for yields from the garden plot this year.

We planted some veggies out anyway – spinach, squash, peas, carrots and… radishes.

Did you know that the seed-to-harvest time for a radish is 22 days? 22 days!

We planted the garden late. Not too late. We get snow in Colorado until the end of May, almost for sure, so planting in June is not unusual.

But radishes are ready to eat in 22 days. So now, my son runs in to the kitchen every evening with a few radishes.

Nevermind that radishes are almost too pungent to eat if they are raw and taste like nothing if they are cooked – if you are what you eat, we’re radishes now. We’ve had them steamed, sauteed, raw, roasted, grilled, and in pico de gallo. From experience, I can tell you, the pico is the best.

This experience – particularly the joy of bringing the radishes in every night – has reminded me of the importance of enjoying life on the short-term.  

We have a lot of long-term goals: about where we want to live, what we want to do, what we want to know, how we want our family to look. These can get kind of nebulous and overwhelming.

I also have a lot of long-term writing goals. Do I want to write books? Duh. Not-so-secret secret – most people would love to write their own book. Anyone involved in any way in the book creation process definitely wants to write their own book.

But it’s not time for that yet.

Right now, it’s time for radishes. Like writing this blog. And planting a little garden. And walking around the block together. And eating Nutella tortillas.

Here’s to the short-term.