Who knew? The burpless cucumber might be an improvement, but I would nominate several vegetables for modification first: what about wiltless lettuce, or finger-gouging-spike-less artichokes?

But I digress. I bought a handful of the cukes, which are thinner, paler, and more curved than their traditional counterparts. (They’re sold elsewhere as English cucumbers, which apparently did not raise their profile.) Aside from being seedless—the seeds are the source of the burps for the more sensitive among us—they taste the same.

A good way to use these cukes (or any, really) is in simple, a nationless summer salad—chop up equal parts tomatoes and cucumbers, then dice a block of halloumi cheese (get it in a Middle Eastern market) for a nice salty touch. Throw in some fresh chopped basil, if you like, and then a little oregano, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. It’s so quick, your company will be speechless.

Burpless cucumbers, $4 a pound at Yuno’s Farm stand, Union Square Greenmarket, Mondays and Fridays, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Besides hostas’ no-fuss disposition—they thrive on neglect—gardeners love the fact that they can curate a collection. In my Riverside Park garden, I have four varieties, all with diverse foliage, all good-looking throughout the season. My favorite is Sum and Substance, with its ridiculously scaled leaves—at two feet wide they look like elephant ears. These jumbo chartreuse leaves are a perfect foil to the scattered boulders on the shady hillside. Hosta Frances, with its dark green leaves, has a clean white margin that any designer could love.

Hostas’ stately flowers rise on tall stalks above the dense foliage, and look lovely when closely massed. And mass they do—the clumps just keep on coming, squeezing out weeds and providing a great cover under shady garden areas. Don’t be afraid to divide them in the fall: Just slice the crown (the clump at the base of the leaves) and give half to a friend to start her own collection.

“He’s quite feminine in a way, and I think that’s something quite different than a lot of lead actors sometimes who are butch beyond belief,” Mr. Boyle cooed of Mr. Murphy. “He’s quite, androgynous is not the word … there’s something bisexual about him, and I don’t mean in a preference way, I meant in a … there’s something very feminine about him, but people relate to him as a man. It’s very hard to explain.”

Mr. Murphy, in all his lanky, pale-skinned, freckle-spackled, glacial blue-eyed glory, stars in Sunshine as a physicist leading a team of astronauts in an outer space journey to save the dying sun.

“It should feel like a real-time experience, that claustrophobia of space and the pressure and intensity of that journey and the psychological dimension of coming face to face with the source of all life in our universe,” Mr. Boyle explained. “If you look back at all of our cultures, whether pagan or Christian, the sun … it’s everything. It dictates the rhythm of our existence, and people sacrifice to it, et cetera. The whole idea of the way we set up the film was this obsession, really.”

But don’t be expecting any Aerosmith-soundtracked cheesy moments or a tearful ending, Mr. Boyle warned. “There would be no cheering crowds.” Except, perhaps, for the captivating Mr. Murphy.

Sunshine, starring Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, and Chris Evans, opens at the Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema, 143 E. Houston Street, on July 20.

The Asian vegetable is aptly named—it’s grass-green and plump, and shaped almost exactly like its namesake. Its flesh is yellowish green, or greenish yellow, but either way it has more color than your average summer squash. The flavor is not dramatically different, but it is pleasantly nutty.

Preparation, as usual, is minimal: Slice the squash top to bottom, very thinly—say, the thickness of the Sunday New York Times Magazine when it’s not full of real estate ads—and brush both sides with olive oil. Then toss them on the grill and sprinkle an extremely small amount of ground cumin over them, like pixie dust, as they cook. Pull them off when they’re just starting to brown in the center and are even a little crispy at the edges.

The squash is rich on its own, but it’s even better with coarse sea salt, which provides a nice texture. And even without the spice, it works well as a side dish for heavier meats. Just don’t walk away while you’re cooking.

Avocado squash, $2 per pound at Yuno’s Farm stand, Union Square Greenmarket, Mondays and Fridays, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

As I tried to put together the perfect outfit, I had a few things to consider. First, since I travel crosstown to the garden and often make plans for afterward, I needed to come up with the equivalent of a “day to night” ensemble, but more casual. Also, since I’d become a neighborhood fixture for the playgrounders, joggers and other park regulars, I wanted to add some style to what is, after all, a “quality of life” project. But I also needed my clothes to protect me—working this garden is fraught with peril, from broken glass and slippery rocks to prickly thorns.

Jeans were the obvious choice—not Sevens, but classic Lee brand, bought in rural Vermont, with a kind of hick provenance and generous back pockets that easily accommodate my Felco pruners. Minimalist black sneakers (think Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road), great for scaling rocks or sidewalks, worked perfectly. I paired a simple gray T-shirt, worn a bit tight—gardening is nothing if not sensual—with a white, long-sleeved agnès b button-down that I hung on a tree to stay crisp while I worked. A huge, wide-brimmed straw hat—a baseball cap would have been too prosaic—perfected my farmer chic.

I’d like to think my outfit reflected what E.B. White wrote about Katharine in his intro to Onward and Upward in the Garden: “She simply refused to dress DOWN to a garden … she walked among her flowers as she walked among her friends.”

Xanadu on Broadway, a campy interpretation of the 1980 movie starring Olivia Newton-John (played by Kerry Butler onstage) as a roller-skating Greek muse who comes down from the heavens to inspire an artist to open a roller disco, opened just yesterday. But 80’s die-hards have been lining up for weeks to see the musical in previews. Douglas Carter Beane, who wrote the book for the stage adaptation of the trippy cult classic, seems charmed by these “Xanadudes and Xanadudettes.”

“They have pictures of themselves dressed up as the muses and going for their ninth time, nine times for each muse. They love it,” chuckled Mr. Beane, whose play The Little Dog Laughed was recently nominated for a best play Tony award.

Mr. Beane remembers being confused and captivated by the movie 20-odd years ago. “[HBO] would show Xanadu and Clash of the Titans in some kind of relentless cycle,” Mr. Beane told The Observer on the phone. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, did they leave out a reel or something?’ I was like, ‘What’s going on? I can’t even follow it!’

“It’s a great premise, it’s a great story,” Mr. Beane insisted. “Who wouldn’t want someone to fall out of the sky and inspire them and take care of all their problems?

“People come up to me and say I had a really horrible week, but I got tickets to the show because my friend was in town and now I’m in a great mood.” Indeed, it’s amazing what 90 minutes of intentionally cheesy dancing, 80’s-tastic music numbers and cheeky dialogue from a ditzy blonde with a wittingly bad Australian accent will do to cure the dogs days of summer. As the original Electric Light Orchestra opening number cheers, “I’m Alive.” Seriously.

Xanadu on Broadway, Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 West 44th Street, for times and tickets, www.telecharge.com.

There were two offenders: a few mint (mentha) plants that I hastily threw in the ground last year and some sunflower mammoths (helianthus), an annual whose seeds I had scattered a month ago. Now they were thriving but badly sited: The mint, a famously invasive herb, was stuck with some periwinkle (vinca minor), a low-growing dense ground cover with tiny violet flowers, and the native sunflower, which grows to 10 feet, was dangerously close to the pavement, too much of a temptation for playground-bound children and basketball players.

Mint is not normally grown as an ornamental—more likely it sits in a kitchen garden—but it has a few features that make it ideal for my craggy plot. Its “wandering” quality will help it fill the barren spots under the katsura tree, plus it flowers nicely before becoming blowsy by August. And that penetrating aroma just might repel my rat pack (I’m sure they prefer meat to menthol). It’s worth a try.

As for those 10-footers—I placed them out of harm’s way, midway up the slope, next to some Manhattan schist that makes up the dramatic backdrop of my garden. By summer’s end, they will tower over the rocks, becoming my own garden skyscrapers.

Note to self: There is a reason no one has written such a book. The reason is that it would be very short. Chapter 1: “It Doesn’t Work.” The End.

Rather than releasing some deep inner flavor, the coals just charred the vegetables, so we ended up eating burned raw radishes and blackened carrots, which taste even worse than they sound.

After my experiment, I learned that you actually can grill these veggies, but first you need to boil (or microwave) them for three to four minutes. Alternately, or in addition, wrap them in tin foil before placing them on the grill. To me, this defeats the purpose of grilling, which is all about minimal preparation.

My conclusion: Root vegetables—or these, anyway—are built for roasting or eating raw. Want to try the grill anyway? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Unburned root vegetables, $2 a bunch, Migliorelli Farm Stand (among many others), Union Square Greenmarket, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, sunup to sundown.

That loosened them up!

During Motown’s golden years, Ms. Wilson swayed behind Diana Ross’ massive ’fro and sang, as she put it, “all the oohs and aahs and baby babys.”

“You can laugh all you want, but I laughed all the way to the bank,” she declares in her new lounge act, “Mary Wilson: Up Close.” Under hushed lights, surrounded by velvety red curtains and well-heeled guests clinking $16 glasses of wine, Ms. Wilson, 63, croons classic ballads, from Joni Mitchell’s pensive “Both Sides Now” to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” (accompanied by Mr. Joel’s own saxophonist, Richie Cannata!).

But don’t expect Ms. Wilson to break out “Baby Love” or “Stop in the Name of Love”; “My World Is Empty Without You” is the Supreme’s only Motown classic on the bill.

“I said to myself, ‘Self, it’s time that you do what you want to do,’” Ms. Wilson told The Observer. “Not that I didn’t want to be a Supreme. I love being a Supreme. If I had to pass or die or whatever, I would want to come back as Mary Wilson of the Supremes, you understand. But you know, after doing something for 48 years, you know, oohs for 48 years, you need to do something else.” ­

“Mary Wilson: Up Close,” Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, 540 Park Avenue, performances through June 30, www.ticketweb.com.

My fillet still had some skin attached, and when I felt the sharp, sandpapery edge, I got a chill. A dining companion, upon touching the skin, jumped back and said, “I think it’s going to taste like human.” (No, I told her—that’s the Land Shark.)

The sand shark’s flesh is white, but streaked through with red—the blood of countless innocent victims, probably. This meal was for all of them.

The meat is surprisingly thin and cooks up quickly on the grill. Its flavor is slightly fishier than that of more expensive white fish like cod and halibut. It’s also more dense, but somehow light at the same time. Any dressing will do, as long as it has some lemon in it.

A 1948 Fish and Wildlife Service guide states that the sand shark—which can grow eight to 10 feet long—eats mainly small fish and is a “harmless nuisance.” That’s nice. I’ll just stay in the boat.

Sand shark, $4.95 a pound at Pura Vida fish stand, Union Square Greenmarket, Fridays, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.