For better or worse, the garden is in the ground. I have a love hate relationship with gardening. I love the produce, and honestly I don’t even mind the work it takes to get the plants set out and cultivated. But I hate all the effort it takes to ward off the rabbits, beetles, aphids and blight that always seem to strike, despite my best efforts. And I get tired of coming up with effective watering ideas. It always seems like, for better or worse, I end up hauling five gallon buckets back and forth from the water spigot, thinking, now WHY have I not set up my watering system yet?
Then again, there’s some elementary level of pride that comes from my sore muscles, the result of that hard, manual labor. It connects me to our great-grandparents who worked so hard, and had no avenue to complain, because there really wasn’t a better watering method. Probably not anything they could afford, anyway.
Both of my dad’s paternal grandparents were extensive gardeners. Now, it’s reasonable to believe that most of our great-grandparents were gardeners. That was back when everyone had backyard gardens, and you gardened and canned so you could eat.
I’ll never forget my Granny’s tomatoes. I’ve told you about them before; but she had this one variety, they just grew gigantic! They were yellow with red variegated stripes. We ate huge slices of them with fried chicken and ice cold tea on a trip to the State Fair one time. Granny’s tomatoes will always be a major part of that memory.
Gardens are becoming more and more prevalent in our society today. While they are mostly hobby, there is a lot of money to be saved in growing your produce for an entire season-plus.
Hope you have fun gardening this summer, making memories, living out the ways of old, and enjoying the fruits of your labor.
God Bless,
