The first of July means the beginning of the harvest season-in fact, the Fourth has always been my father's yardstick for when he can expect the first ripe tomatoes. So this weekend, I took stock of my crops.

The peas and radishes had fallen victim to the heat, and it appeared some evil entity had eaten my tomatoes when they were just green and forming (more on that in my next post).

As for the squash and zucchini, they'd completely taken over, though they've not yet grown to the 20 feet my father insists they will [0]. I also saw loads of green beans going gangbusters all over the vine.

I pulled on some gloves, and went in for the kill on the zucchini. Yank. Ouch! I soon learned that it's more like the other way around. You can't just pluck them off the plant (well, bush, really); you have to dive in headfirst and get spiked in the face by what feel like porcupine quills. What you really need is a mask. I managed to grab the largest zucchini I saw, only to find it had been gnawed on. I picked a few more tiny ones, but was feeling quite bloodied by the quills, so I moved on to the beans.

I enlisted my toddler twins' help with picking the beans. Given the lack of quills, I thought they might enjoy it. Wrong. They were only interested in plucking the leaves, not in picking the beans themselves. And when I handed them the beans for safekeeping, they tried to put them back on the vine. I finished picking the beans on my own.

At least I had my first crops harvested; now it was time to cook them up for the boys. I will admit I used a little butter (just a little) because...well...the boys have never eaten home-grown before. And now, the moment of truth had arrived. I carefully cut up the zucchini and beans, sat the boys in their high chairs, and placed the steaming garden veggies on their plates.

Each twin tried a piece of zucchini, pulled a face, and immediately spat it out. Duncan then went about stacking his zucchini next to his plate. Maybe they'd like the beans better?

Only marginally, it turned out. They spent more time mashing the beans into their plates than eating them. I'm not ready to give up on the twins yet, though. If I can keep my tomatoes from getting eaten on the vine, maybe I can get the twins hooked on those instead?