Gardening is something you learn by doing---and by making mistakes....
Like Cooking, Gardening is a constant process of experimentation, repeating the successes and throwing out the failures.
Carol Stocker

Monday, March 14, 2011

Should I Plant A Garden?

It's funny how at the end of the growing season I'm drained....tired of watering, picking, worrying about hail, chasing off grasshoppers and I start letting the weeds have their way.  I wonder if having a garden is worth the work.  I ask myself, "Should I even plant a garden next year?"

I get melancholy as fall creeps in and I watch my garden slowly wither away with every frost.....time to plow it under...."Should I even plant a garden next year?"

Now, Old Man Winter has dropped by for a lengthy stay.  It seems his visits are getting longer and colder.  It's been an unusually hard winter for us Zone 4 planters.  I've been looking at the blanket of snow covering what used to be a thriving metropolis of veggies and I remember, "Hmmmmm, the peas did real well along that west fence last year.  But, should I even plant a garden next year?"

As I look back, my tomatoes were plentiful and hearty...until the hail hit.  I hate thinning carrots, which wasn't a problem because the wind blew most the seeds away.  The garden spiders were thick as thieves; how I hated to disturb her lair just to pick a zucchini....she may follow me into the house and seek out here revenge...eeeeek!  The grasshoppers killed my potato plants; I only got 5 potatoes out of the whole bunch.  "Should I even plant a garden next year?"

But then I recall how well my radishes did....and my peas, how they thrived it that cool spring weather.  My onions....it's March and we are still eating those sweet onions.  I had more beans than I could give away, and how delicious was that swiss chard!  How could I forget about my beets...so sweet, they tasted like I fertilized them with sugar.

Now that I think about it, yes...all the labor was worth it.  How could I NOT plant a garden?  I think I'll expand!  Now, where did I put that garden planner?

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