The gardener

I'm a gardener. It worked! We have produce in our Victory Garden! I picked our radishes already, carrots are popping up in their places and I'm getting tomatoes! And onions! And lettuce! And peppers! And zucchini! My herb garden? um, yah, not so much. But my crazy mint is happy, a little too happy actually.

So it's all working for the most part. My stuff is growing and producing. We've had so much rain, every.stinking.day, that I haven't even had to water. Talk about low maintenance!

I love that BigBoy goes with me to check on our garden. We look for cabbage moth caterpillars on our broccoli. Check out new flowers on our tomatoes. Pull weeds together- he checks with me first to make sure it's not a new crop. And this is the big one folks: he knows what the plants look like. The plants, not just the fruit/veggie. He knows that broccoli grows from a tall, cabbagey stalk. Carrots have lacey, fern like tops and the root, what we eat, is below. That zucchinis start as a lovey, bright yellow flower.

This was one thing that really struck me while reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. What plants look like. We are so far removed from where the plants grow, that we usually have no idea what they look like. That peanuts are bushy. Asparagus are perennials. Peas are climbers. Stuff I never really thought about. And what I was teaching my kids. Food doesn't "come from" the store. It comes from the ground, the soil. This is one of the reasons why we take care of the Earth, because it provides us with our food. Makes it pretty clear in the mind of a 5 y.o. I can't wait until I need a tomato for lunch and we can run out to the garden and grab one.

Now that I'm a "Gardener" I can officially worry. I'm worried we are getting too much rain. I'm worried my zucchini will choke out everything else, even though I spaced them out. I'm worried the cabbage moths will eat too much of my broccoli leaves and then they won't produce. I'm worried I will get a bunch of stuff in when I'm on vacation. (Good news for neighbors though!) Us "Gardeners" worry a bunch about too much vs. not enough. Doesn't it make you want to grow something just to give you worry rights?