The Spring Garden

Every year for the past nine years, I plan a spring garden. Now just because I plan a garden doesn't mean it always comes to fruition. Some years the earth even gets tilled, but life gets in the way.

Last year, the goats ate the garden THREE times. They squeezed and squirmed their way through three layers of fencing (chain link, bull wire and chicken wire). The garden grew back twice but the third time, there was nothing left to grow. I sold the goats shortly after so they won't be a factor this year.

Several years ago, the kiddos were involved in basketball and cheerleading, when that was finally over we had some out of town visits to make, so no garden that year.

My fondest garden memories are of our first vegetable garden. It was huge. I even grew black beans. We spent an hour or more each evening out in the garden after dear husband came home from work. We would also get the fresh hen eggs from that day. Many evenings I would either make a huge salad for supper or make an omelet and saute' the vegetables. I still have some of the black beans from that garden. I remember the joy I had giving gifts of fresh vegetables to friends and family. We learned a lot that year, like when to pick watermelons. The kiddos and their friends had so much fun sitting on the tailgate of the truck eating watermelons throughout the summer and having watermelon seed spitting contests. At various times, either Little Miss Muffet or Little Boy Blue would have lost a tooth and it was a great place for the seed to exit. I have reaped the rewards of those watermelon seed spitting contests for years. Watermelon vines have shown up all over our property, some from the contests and evidently some from the birds.

Okay, enough reminiscing. I received a seed catalog in the mail from www.rareseeds.com/ .

If I buy all the seeds I want to buy, my entire property will be taken up with all sorts of exotic vegetables. There won't even be a lawn because it will be taken up with red and yellow carrots, purple cauliflower and beans that turn green when you cook them and the blue pumpkins will take up lots of room with their sprawling vines. The best thing of all - they are all heirloom seeds, no GMO, no hybrids, no gene altering. I love it! I am going to have to pace myself, say only order 10 packets of seeds, well maybe 15. Dear husband did tell me to buy whatever I want. What he doesn't know is I want one of everything. Dear me! that could be expensive! LOL
I guess I will begin my annual garden planning, so I can see what what seeds I need (want) to buy and estimate how large of a space it will be this year. With buying some of these wonderfully, neat seeds I have read about, maybe ... hopefully I will have lush vegetable garden with prolific growers and an abundance of wonderful vegetables to share and if there are any left over maybe some to sell at the farmer's market in the neighboring county. Hopefully it's not all wishful thinking.

Every year that we have had a garden, I always buy one exotic item. The first year was black beans. One year was purple bell peppers, they all got fed to the chickens as dear husband thought they were ruined and didn't realize they were supposed to be that color. I on the other hand kept wondering why they kept disappearing off the plant. Mr. Stripey tomatoes have been a favorite more than one year. Yellow pear tomatoes were the exotic choice one year. It all depended on what I could find locally. This year it won't be limited to just one item thanks to my new catalog.