15 July 2008

the garden


I just hated working in the garden when I was a kid. Our soil was a hard clay and the benefit we received from the low production of produce was hardly worth the effort. Our "job list" always consisted of hoeing or weeding 1 or 2 rows. If there was a punishment to be handed out, it would be double that.
Now that I have my own small victory garden, I long for the expanse that my parents had to stretch out potatoes, tomatoes, green beans and corn and everything else. We've got great soil in town, just not a lot of room to plant things. That, along with the thought we were going to be gone over a chunk of the summer led us to plant a much smaller garden this year. We're calling it our "salsa" garden. Due to a small section of volunteer cone flowers, we were pushed to get everything into a 8' by 5' space. Tomatoes, cilantro and bell peppers. Unfortunately, the narrow rows are causing a problem for weeding. And with the head start the weeds had while we were our West, I'm not sure our garden will be very victorious this year in producing salsa.
What I'd really like to do is move the garden to a sunnier spot in our backyard. However, my wife feels like we need someplace for the kids to play; still, I could quadruple the size of the garden and have enough room to get my mower between the rows like my dad does! Speaking of dad, my son kinda stands like him.

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