Corn

When I was young, August was corn on the cob season.  We'd often buy fresh corn at a place called Larry's Fruits and eat it at our cottage.  We had a pressure cooker we could cook it in. (Maybe we still have it around.)

I sometimes burnt my mouth eating corn on the cob.  Today I usually prevent that by pouring cold water on the corn before serving it.  I've also noticed that it's convenient to roll cobs on top of an oblong butter dish.

When we started a garden in our back yard, corn was one of the things we always grew.  Corn stalks and husks make for a lot of stuff to put in the compost. (It's occurred to me that a garden's primary function is to produce compost, and the food is just a byproduct.)

Now that we have a city garden, it isn't suited to corn.  Even if you managed to grow cobs of any size, the raccoons will just get it.  Anyway, one inconvenience about growing corn is that it needs thinning early on, removing many of the little stalks so the rest can grow bigger.  For me, thinning is the hardest part of gardening because it's hard to tell which ones to keep. (You have to do it with root crops too.)

Corn comes from Mexico.  It's only safe to plant when the danger of frost is over, and I've heard that the First Nations figured out that it's safe when the new leaves on the oak trees are the size of a mouse's ear.  Seems very clever to me.