Well, if you’re in the neighborhood, come on over here and rub my head for luck. I’ve got garlic! Boy howdy do I have garlic! I started wiggling the first plant out of the soil and that sucker was the size of a Whiffle ball. They all were. I planted 12 cloves and got only ten heads, but they were stellar. My garlic is massive. My garlic is outside drying in the shade and when I come back to check on it in three weeks I expect to see they’ve attracted their own moons. They’ll look like cocktail onions. My garlic will bounce your garlic right out of the sumo ring. My garlic is stupendous.

And that’s a good thing. I use a lot of garlic. Recipes invariably call for a certain number of cloves, minced, which is annoying, because garlic cloves come in all different sizes, including inside the same head of garlic. I solve this conundrum by heaving in as much garlic as possible, and having massive garlic heads makes that easier. I use the same culinary technique with lime juice (my limes have never met a tablespoon). And in my house grated Parmesan is measured in “mountains.”

These gardening successes tend to surprise me. The first year I planted broccoli, I turned my back on the little seedlings for a couple weeks, and they promptly pumped out heads like beach balls. I froze bag after bag of blanched broccoli. I still have it all, because it turns out you can buy fresh broccoli all year. But still. Come the apocalypse, I’ll have rubbery old broccoli for weeks, and I’ll share.

This year I planted broccoli rabe for the first time instead—six plants. And the reason I know that is I still have the tag in the soil. There is no actual broccoli. There are six plants with leaves you could run up the flagpole and nary a nubbin of broccoli. Pioneer girl that I am, I checked the internet and discovered you can cook broccoli leaves like collard greens and they’re “delicious.” I have my doubts. The website swears all parts of a brassica plant are edible, but that doesn’t mean anyone eds them.

I admit I did not know what broccoli rabe was when I bought the six-pack. I thought it was just skinny little broccoli but evidently it’s this whole thing: spicy and bitter and just delightful once you’ve done a bunch of prep to take out the “sting.” I’m not sure how I feel about vegetables you have to treat like a Japanese pufferfish.

The leaves are supposed to be sort of skinny and the buds should look like broccoli going to seed. But, it says here, they’re more closely aligned with turnips. I have been had.

Then again, I like collard greens a lot, so maybe I should fugu this thing all up. However, although I am directed to sauté leaves, buds, and stems alike in 3-inch lengths, I will not find myself moved to do it until I see some damn buds. And those vaunted skinny leaves might be furled up in the middle somewhere but the outer leaves could work as a rain fly on my tent.

I don’t know where my buds are. They can’t possibly be intimidated by the two squash plants I planted in the same bed. Squash is supposed to rear up and engulf your house when you turn your back, but these are timid. In all likelihood word has gotten around the squash kingdom about our squirrels, which last year took one single bite out of every squash produced. My squash vines are existentially depressed. My broccoli rabe, I have a notion, is lying in wait, setting me up for the big joke. It might end up fine. God knows I’ve got garlic to cook with it.