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all in for the playing in the dirt at the beginning, turning over the soil, planting and building the wind shelters (hurricane force winds are not uncommon where I am from) the squishing off bugs and the harvesting of food (I LOVE FOOD) but when it came to the constant watering and weeding and all the in between stuff I was less than enthusiastic! In the long run though she ended up winning the battles of will and looking back I learned some of the most valuable lessons in life from the experiences I had in the Garden with her!
Each year we would wait for the snow to melt and the ground to thaw, we would go to our garden plots and dig up and turn over the earth, then add in peat moss, manure, top soil and fertilizer (all organic.... you know healthy kind of way) then we would make out the plan of what was going where this year! How many potato hills we needed, where should the beans go, Do we need more zucchini pants this year (The answer is no, NO you do NOT need any more zucchini!) where are the flowers going to be planted (yes flowers in a vegetable garden.... they attract pollinators) ect ect! with all that planned out we would begin to make rows, and hills, and wind tents! it was quite a production to have 6-7 kids running around trying to help plant a garden..... somehow my parents managed with out any major heart problems for many years (I would like to know their secret) eventually we would have potato hills made in neat little rows, tomato tents up, cucumbers in little milk jugs and beans and peas with trellises to grow on..... it was a pretty good looking garden!
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after months of this daily garden up keep we finally got to eat some of the fruits of our hard work! as we needed them vegetables were available, beans, zucchini, peas, cucumbers, carrots, more zucchini (Even though the answer was always NO NO more zucchini we always planted more than enough Zucchini) and yet the work still wasn't done! even after we started to harvest we still needed to weed, and water, and care for all the plants! so now every day of every week we went to the garden to hoe weeds, water plants, harvest veggies and other up keep! even up to covering the garden with quilts and blankets for frosts (Canada? frost? never... I have seen snow in all 12 months at some point) this would continue until the final harvest. (usually would be when we caught word of the first really bad frost!) we would stay until after dark gathering all the salvageable tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, ect ect! a mass gathering of everything possible! and yet even after the final harvest the work wasn't done! we would have to take down all growing structures, cover up the withered plants for compost and nutrient rich soil. so are we done yet? NOPE, now for the washing, the preparing, the canning, the storage ect ect of all the harvested food! and by the time all that is done we are preparing the soil for next years growing season!
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WMI? A TESTIMONY IS GROWN ONE DAY AT A TIME!
Keep gardening.
ReplyDeleteSuch a great gift our mother(and father) shared with us.
ReplyDeleteGreat lesson learned…..and taught! Thanks for sharing your insight…..I will use it as some of my compelling, guilt-tripping this garden season!!!
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