Saturday, March 3, 2007

Frozen peas...

that's what you get when you plant peas this time of year.... some will find this funny.

It is that time of year again. Each year when the Maples and Red Buds begin to show just the slightest tinge of red, I get Spring Fever. One of the ways I go about curing the bug is to start thinking about my gardens - what am I going to plant? when will I start? will the guy across the street come over again this year to tell me how 'he would have done it'? I built a couple of 10' x 4' raised beds last year and had more vegetables and herbs than I knew what to do with. Whenever we were gone for a day or two, we got neighbors to pick tomatoes and squash - whatever was ready - as a way of sharing and connecting. This dovetails with some posts from friends talking about the community aspect of gardening. I guess I have been part of this 'community' gardening-type thing for most of my life, but didn't realize it since it was just life.

I grew up with two gardens - the 1/2 acre we had as a family and then the acre that my grandparents down the road had. From this you can tell that gardening, both vegetables and flowers, was a part of my life - work in our family garden was mandatory, working in grandma's garden was just expected, just what you did. I remember having so many tomatoes, onions, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, beans, corn, squash and the like that we gave it away, froze it, ate it, ate it again, and in some cases probably still threw some to the cows because we didn't know what else to do. If there was even more, we (grandma and the grandkids) sold it to 'meat & threes'. Really, I remember loading my grandparents car trunk with everything and going to a restaurant in town and opening the trunk to sell it to the lady that cooked.

I'll keep you up-to-date about my garden as we progress through Spring.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rodney, I am loving your 'blog'. I always knew you are my kind of per-son - smart, sensitive, loving and kind.I especially enjoyed the visit at The Grand...know just how that feels among good friends. My job in addition to pulling weeds in Mama's garden was to pick off potatoe bugs and put them in a tin can containing kerosene. The "diamond" that I was certain was in the garden one morning about five-thirty turned out to be a drop of dew through which the morning sun was shining at just the right angle to make a dazzling display. Dreams usually take me back to the setting of Mama's house. A night or two ago I dreamed of canning home-made fresh vegetable soup. There is a brand of green lima beans named
Seeva of Seava that grow on a vine and are prolific producers. Somewhere, I have a picture thet Henry took of me on a ladder with my market basket nearly filed with the lettle green limas. Love to you and the four "pinks". Mayme