Gardening by Loretta

[Editor's Note: This story was written by Loretta]

Oh, the memories! We have always had a garden. In Iowa, mom and dad had two gardens: one down by the house and the other at the end of our property.

In the summer time, mom marched us out to the garden, handed us a hoe and showed us to the rows of veggies. She gave us each so many rows to take care of. No one was allowed to leave until all the rows were done. Mine were never done. Louise always finished first and mom had her help the rest of us finish ours. She use to get pissed because she had to do twice as many rows as us. I guess you can say, we fooled around until help showed up. All the people living in the area were basically in the same boat we were: mini-farmers and all the kids had the same duties we had.

When I lived in California, I used to have a garden too. I remember one particular year, I was so proud of how my garden was looking. You know, standing there with admiration when all of a sudden, one of my plants disappeared in front of my eyes! A gopher had burrowed under my garden and was devouring my veggies. I lost half my garden to that little guy.

Needless to say, we had a war on our hands. I finally got him or one of his relatives. I was weeding around the Rose bushes and other flowers when I pulled up a gopher on the end of a plant! First, he scared the "blank" out of me but then I recovered. I grabbed my shovel and beat him to death and threw him in the trash can. It was MY victory! He might have won most of the battles but I won the war.

I’m having similar wars now with my garden. Something is burrowing under my garden, we're always filling in holes but apparently whatever it is, doesn’t like chili plants.

Tonight, part of dinner was a large salad made up of bell pepper, tomatoes and cucumber, which were home grown. Plus onion, lettuce and avocado bought in a store. Very good, if I say so myself. Our cucumbers, both Japanese and regular, are growing so fast I’ve got six of them on my kitchen counter right now and I'm looking in cook books for any kind of recipe that appeals to me.

Last week, my niece's husband decided that one of the watermelons was ready to pick. When it was cut open, we realized it wasn’t and it needed a another few weeks to ripen. Still it was sweet, it just lacked color and time. My beefsteak tomatoes turned out really small. I think someone must have changed the tags.

As far as gardening, I might not be the best, but I'm still trying.

Pocket Gopher