I had the pleasure this evening of photographing the most beautiful organic garden I have ever seen. Laura Simon lives in Wauwinet with her husband, Renaissance man Jim Gross, in an idyllic setting of fresh vegetables, beautiful flowers, tupelo blossoms and their attendant honeybees, squawking chickens, and inquisitive dogs. It’s early in the season and many seedlings are just setting their roots. But one bed is in full production. As Laura puts it, “the asparagus are at their peak rudeness.”

I doubt I will ever have the patience to grow my own asparagus. Instead of planting a seed and eating the harvest a few months later, you have to give an asparagus bed 3, or even 4 years, to establish a network of roots and store huge quantities of nutrients and energy in order to produce its delicate, nutritious spears. Even when mature, the bed produces a low weight yield per square yard, and for only 6 to 8 weeks a year. If I read Mrs. Simon’s book correctly, the asparagus bed I was photographing tonight is over 20 years old.

Unless you boil the flavor out of them (and it doesn’t take long to do this), it’s hard to go wrong preparing asparagus for the dinner table. You can steam them for 5-6 minutes and serve them with your favorite vinaigrette and some chopped, fresh chervil. Or you can dry-grill them in a grill pan until they’re nicely marked and then treat them with lemon juice, olice oil, and parmesan cheese. One of my favorite ways of serving them is to preheat the oven to 425 deg., wrap the stalks in pancetta with the tips poking out, drizzle with a little olive oil and roast for about 10 minutes (until the pancetta is crispy). Soft-boil some eggs in lightly salted water for about 5 minutes, cut off the tops, put the eggs back in the egg carton and serve with 2-3 spears per egg (for dipping) and salt and pepper.

Here are more recipes from the NY Times.

Here’s a link to Laura’s book, written in 1998, and still frequently showing up in Best Garden Reads lists online: Dear Mr Jefferson:  Letters From a Nantucket Gardener. I look forward to spending more time in her garden, as the season progresses.