Mary, Mary quite contrary

Posted on June 27, 2011

how does your garden grow?
My parents have always been teachers, and had their summers free from the day to day classroom routine. You know what they say about teachers, their three favorite things about teaching are June, July and August. My dad always had a huge garden behind our garage while I was growing up. It was something for him to do in the off months and he was good at it. His thumb is about as green as they come. The rest of us weren’t too big on helping with the gardening, planting, weeding, watering, etc, but we loved to eat what he harvested. We may not have helped tremendously but my dad probably preferred it that way anyway (you know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen), but we loved to cook what he grew. Zucchini was always the most plentiful along with tomatoes and my favorite, green beans! He also tried fun things like watermelon, squash, pumpkins, rhubarb and cucumbers.

I always thought it would be fun to have a garden when I grew up. My dad made it look effortless. You till the ground, plant some seeds and set up the sprinkler. I guess I failed to watch him pulling weeds and making sure things were in the correct location for the amount of sunlight and water they required. I didn’t pay too much attention to his gardening techniques because I figured it would be easy to do and maybe even second nature to a gardeners daughter. I was wrong. It’s not difficult but it does require some planning, time, and attention. The first things I ever planted were in planters on my back patio when we lived in San Antonio. I was worried about animals eating my produce so I moved the planters inside to my atrium. I probably forgot to water them a time or two but the plants looked to be doing okay for a while. They grew tall and started to sprout some flowers. I was so excited, this gardening thing is going to be easy! Then they stopped growing, started to wither and fade and I probably just gave up. Soon I had brown sticks hanging out in a pot of dry dirt. Fail. Then people would tell me, oh it’s hard to garden in Texas. It’s just your first time make sure to try this or this. But I visited friends who had gardens overflowing with vegetation and I was still looking at my sticks in the dirt.

Well, the summer after my first “garden” I was pregnant and did not want to attempt to garden in Texas while being large and in charge. I figured I could try again the next year. Little did I know that the next year would have us moving to Tennessee. I was so excited with the prospect of being able to start a garden. Then realized that our rental home didn’t have any beds for gardening in and I didn’t think it would be cool to start my own (not knowing if the owner would allow it and not knowing how long we’d live here), so I decided to try the planter method again. I’ve tried starting plants from seeds with little to no luck so Naomi and I went shopping and got some starter plants. I put them in their pots, added the dirt, watered them and waited for sunshine. I wasn’t sure what would happen. I figured that even if we didn’t get anything from our little planter garden at least it would be fun to look at, take photos of, water and teach the kids a thing or two with. The first fruit that came to be was a little disfigured strawberry. I was so excited. So excited in fact that I cut the small little strawberry into four measly little pieces so that we could all enjoy the fruit of our labor. I was pretty sure that would be the only thing that actually grew. Then to my surprise when I was taking the little strawberry indoors for safe keeping from the squirrels Naomi noticed a little green tomato on one of the four tomato plants. I was thrilled and was probably jumping up and down. I actually helped something grow. I didn’t kill it before it produced its fruit. Success. That green tomato continued to grow larger and eventually turned red. It was thrilling to see the kids excitement when they realized the tomato was orange and then red. They were so excited to watch it grow and turn colors and gave me daily reports on it’s status. They noticed a few other tomatoes on my Roma plant too, although one of them rotted before we could get to it. I talked with my dad and he said it’s because it got too much water too quickly. See, green thumb, even from over in China! I’m hopeful that the other Roma tomato will turn out okay and that more and more will continue to grow. I also noticed that a cucumber has started to grow.

It’s such a great lesson for the kids. They think it’s the coolest thing that vegetables grow out of flowers! It’s a great lesson in patience and in how to take care of things. I hope that someday when we get settled into our own home here in Jackson that I can have a big garden and that the kids will be excited to help me with it. I hope that we can sit down together and plant the seeds, weed the ground and pick the produce from our own garden. For now, we’ll enjoy the fruit of our labor, one tomato at a time.

Do you see the cucumber starting to grow…