Since the beginnings of married life, I’ve had an herb garden that included basic herbs and simple vegetables growing. Even in Washington D.C. (when neighbors were giving me a good natured ribbing about farming in the city) I managed a few carrots and leaf lettuce in otherwise uninhabitable soil. In North Dakota I had a HUGE garden, and in both Michigan and Indiana we had back door kitchen gardens with an abundance of herbs and the occasional tomato and pepper plants.
However, since moving to the Rio Grande Valley of deep south Texas, I’ve had terrible, terrible luck with growing anything beyond cactus.
Recently, on a trip to the hardware store for light bulbs, Madeleine spotted tomato and pepper plants. I said yes to her request and thus we’re going to try again. We’ve little to lose and much to gain and the experience of growing her own plants and watching them grow, even if we harvest only one small tomato, is valuable. It’s an experience I had growing up, one that Gregory had when we lived up north (big yard, big gardens, big apple tree), and an important opportunity for her to tend, nourish and celebrate.
We are fortunate that we live where we can get good, fresh produce all year long.
Coming to harvest very soon are 4015 and other large sweet onions. They are in the fields and looking good. We drove some back roads the other day and here’s how the onions look:
It won’t be long until harvest. The photos don’t do the produce justice and back a few rows are large bulbs poking their heads up as if to shout to the farmer: “we’re ready!”
Final note on our backyard vegetable garden. Notice the sticks. We have a bzillion feral cats in the neighborhood and the last thing I wanted was for them to dig in the flower pot for any number of reasons. The solution: big sticks. So far, so good.
Here’s hoping for a Bacon Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich post sometime in the next few weeks.
~Enjoy!
