Our sugar baby watermelon seem to triple in size every 24 hours. I think if I sat and stared at one for an afternoon I would see it stretch and grow before my very eyes.

Our wildflower border has taken off in the midsummer heat. Where only six or seven days ago it seemed scraggly, green, full of stems and void of colorful potential, we now have bursting bouquets of bright orange, deep blue, sunny yellow and creamy white. And our sunflower stalks are growing taller by the day!! I cannot wait for them to bloom. We may love our vegetables, but there’s something about the flower border that gets people off the street and into the garden. It is warm, inviting, and brings a wild, unplanned look to the prim and proper cobbled streets of Harvard square.

There was an interesting New York Times article published a few days ago about a recently-released Center for Disease Control and Prevention study. The numbers are discouraging, to say the least. Statistics like these reinforce the idea that having something as simple as a garden in a visible part of campus/Cambridge might encourage more positive eating habits in all who walk by or stop in for a minute to see what is going on. Developing a familiarity with unprocessed, fresh versions of everyday vegetables–just what they look like and how they develop– may encourage people to think twice when choosing between baby carrots and of-nebulous-corn-origin Doritos. But the statistics also point to a deeper, more ingrained problem in the way Americans conceptualize food, eating, and nutrition. It is going to take much more than a community garden in every town to change the way people think about vegetables.

And to David Bernstein– zucchini are nowhere near as intimidating as you think they are!