A Blogging "Vacation" is Hopefully Ending

Hello folks... yes, I'm still alive!  And so's the garden.  :)  Well, mostly... the chard and bull's blood beets are still hanging in there through our crazy winter rains, and I keep picking off a leaf or two for delicious salad accents.  And the pearl onions have recently reseeded themselves like grass, so we keep nibbling those baby greens as well.  The nasturtiums were going amazingly strong and started to wrap around the house, but I opted to get rid of them to reduce the aphid population in next year's crops.

Happiest. Aphids. Ever.

I haven't been doing so well with the journal lately, as you have probably noticed.  The reality is that my job/location changes a year ago have left me with 2.5 hours or less of free time per weeknight, which are usually spent either with my husband or blankly staring into space in a failed attempt to reboot my brain.  The result is that I end up doing all of the journal writing and picture-taking (because who wants weekday garden photos taken in the dark like the above photo?) and garden/house maintenance on weekends.

Strangely, in the holiday/anniversary/birthday season of the last 3 months, I have not had a single free weekend day to do this!  As naturally unsocial as I am, I'm not sure how this is even possible.  Anyway, life became far too busy, and two things had to go:  blogging and my sanity.  Blogging minus the sanity would have just been "raving," and nobody likes to hear that.  Or do they?  Next journal idea:  Voices In My Hair.

I am expecting to get back into the swing of blogging soon, in the new year when weekends will be my own again.  The prospect of having time to do all the menial accumulating tasks like laundry and deep-cleaning and responding to emails and getting my hands dirty in the garden... it fills my heart with song!  In all honesty, I crave being a productive science-minded mom running her own home more than the current reality of being a harried grumpy sleep-deprived scientist running an understaffed lab.  Someday I'll make this happen with a home business... someday.

Someone made this 2.5' pumpkin by engraving it when it was young, and then they gave it to my brother-in-law who teaches grade-school science.  Science DOES indeed rock!  I totally want to do this project.

There are lots of photos of the garden's progress since October, so I will fill in the gaps in the blog as well.  Boy, are there stories to tell!  I was just going through the Baker Creek heirloom seed catalog this morning, and I'm about to order some new and strange seeds... the theme for next year's garden appears to be "purple" and "dragon."  You'd think that since my ultimate goal is to actually have food to eat from such small garden space, the theme would be "tried & true" plants, but noooooo, I just have to be weird and go for the Dragon's Egg cucumber.  I suppose the biggest goal is really just to have fun and get a little better at growing things each year.  :)
I do need to get some good producers in the garden this year though...

So my question to you is:
What is your most productive garden plant?