The Garden

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for gardening.  When I was growing up my parents always had a garden.  Sometimes it was in my back yard.  Other times it was larger on property that friends owned.  I remember one time gardening on some property, with lots of neighbors, on property that eventually contained my church.

I have fond memories of my Grandfather who also loved to garden.  When a neighbor, who had a large apple orchard, decided to clear out the old trees and replant, my Grandfather was able to garden in between these new apple trees.  He had one of the largest gardens that I have ever been a part of!  I remember several times getting up with my Father to go and help water this garden.  We would get water shares from a canal that passed along the property line.  At the designed time, we would divert the water into the garden and use shovels to direct the water where we wanted it to go.  The watering times would come at all hours.  I especially enjoyed getting the water at midnight and having to use flashlights to see what we were doing.

But what rewards we would get from the hours of labor that was put into a garden.  The fresh vegetables had a taste that no grocery store could ever match.  There is no other situation, other than a personal garden, where you can pick a tomato when it is truly ripe, from the vine.  The sweetness in unreal!

Eventually I got married.  I soon discovered that my wife had the same love for gardening that I did.  We started out in a small condo where we had a small garden in the back yard.  It was a lot of fun.  I especially enjoyed the BLT sandwiches with garden-ripe tomatoes on it.  Pure heaven!

My wife and I have lived in several homes.  Each has had a garden in the back yard.  Each garden has become progressively larger.  Our current home has a rather large garden, almost a quarter acre!  We have grow boxes for our vegetables,  an area for raspberries and strawberries, and an area for melons and squash.  We also have a rather large area for corn, as corn on the cob is a favorite of mine.

Last year I had made some changes to my employment which required me to travel farther to and from work than I had originally had to do.  As a result, I was unable to spend time in my garden after work, as it was typically dark by the time I arrived home.  I did spend as much time on Saturdays as I could, getting the corn planted (45 rows), the vegetables planted, the berries weeded, etc.  The garden was already to go.  A few weeks later the corn started to poke up through the ground.

Then I was informed that I would need to be involved in some software releases at work that would occur Friday nights and Saturday.  Needless to say, my gardening time had been effectively snatched away from me!  When the corn starts to poke up out of the ground, it is followed by tons and tons of weeds.  It is important to get the weeds removed so that the corn can thrive.  I asked my wife and kids to weed the corn, since I would be unable to due to work.  On the following Sunday, I went to look at my garden and the corn was riddled with weeds.  I asked my wife and kids a second time to help.  This repeated for several weeks as the weed overtook the garden eventually reducing any hope of crop for the season.  The weeds choked out the berries, the tomatoes overgrew and didn't produce well, and the corn, my prized corn, choked out by weeds, didn't produce a single ear!

So, today, April 2011, my garden sits as a former shell of itself.  My wife has asked me to help her do a garden this year, but the pain of last year is too great.  I don't know if there is enough trust to make a garden work this year.  I know that I should support this, but maybe I won't be able to.

Till next time,
Bill