musings of my mind: A garden

My parents planted a garden, every year they planted a garden. Not just any garden, but a full blown out garden with lots of vegetables; lots and lots of vegetables. There were potatoes, peas, beets, carrots, green beans, radishes, asparagus, tomatoes, corn, rhubarb and raspberries. Was there other vegetables probably but those were the ones I was willing to eat, mostly. Mostly I say because I would not eat the radishes or beets and rarely the asparagus. You had to force asparagus down me by drowning it in cheese sauce, but not the tomatoes, peas or raspberries. Oh, the raspberries - heaven on earth. During the summer, a response to"What is your favorite food, Ellen" would be raspberries and cream; every time, without hesitation. If you were to ask me pretty much any other time of the year; my response would be "Baked potatoes with sour cream", another by product of my parents' garden. Often though the potatoes growing in our garden were "new" potatoes not the russet potato of Idaho; the baker potato. Those we gathered from a neighboring farm. Russet potatoes were in plenty of supply in Shelley, Idaho; the home of French's potato factory, the two week Spud vacation - ha ha that was a misnomer, Spud vacation was 2 weeks off of school while your parents, older siblings and everyone else worked the potato fields, and the Russets - Shelley High School's fierce sport teams and mascot. Our mascot was a russet potato, imagine a giant potato cheering you on at sport events. Imagine lining up your mascots; a cougar, a warrior, a tiger and than a potato - you get the picture.

It seemed daily in the garden we were weeding, removing the unwanted growth so the vegetables had their nourishment and sunshine. I might have removed a beet or two in the process, just saying because I couldn't tell the difference. Once the vegetables came on there was the picking. Once the picking was done there was the canning. With peas, it involved shelling and getting to those delicious fresh peas inside their pods - we must have froze the peas because canned peas are mushy and yucky. With green beans, it involved snapping the ends off and snapping the beans in half or thirds to fit in the jars. And there was cucumbers too growing - cucumbers that would turn into delicious pickles; dill, butter, and sweet. The memory of eating a fresh cucumber evades me, but the pickles brining in the crock for days and weeks, it seemed, with vinegar penetrating the senses. Potatoes and carrots were stored in a dark cellar or a immense hole my dad dug under the storage shed for just that purpose. The tomatoes were bottled and canned for later use in sauces, and soups, but often we just ate them straight off the vine warmed with the sunshine and a little salt sprinkled on top. A bite into this sweet beauty sending a squirt of tomato juice down your chin was the best. Cherry tomatoes would just be popped into the mouth whole, no squirting required, or sweet, yellow pear tomatoes shaped just as they are called and small enough to be eaten whole. Corn was removed from the stalk, husked, with an occasionally scream upon finding a worm or earwig among the hairs and more likely dropped perhaps even chucked. Retrieved, shooked and inspected closely breaking off the contaminated section, washed before dropping into boiling water bringing out more sweetness before smothering in butter, sprinkling with salt - never pepper, and devoured. Fresh corn on the cob was candy to my taste buds and my siblings and we couldn't get enough. Even if it meant stealing corn from the neighboring field. One afternoon, my brother Greg, sauntered across the road to the neighboring corn field, picked him several ears of corn, prepared them for eating and was surely disappointed upon his first bite, we all were. We thought he must have cooked the corn wrong, how could it taste so disgustingly. It took Mom and Dad coming home to help us discover the difference between feed corn and sweet corn.

Picking tomatoes is easy, the red, ripe tomato stands out among the leaves. Potatoes were dug from the brown soil with a shovel, carrots the same. Most vegetables were easy to retrieve from their home, their growing up place but raspberries called for a bit of an expertise or patience, perhaps even being a contortionist. Gathering raspberries was a scavenger hunt. Those bright, red berries hung down beneath a thick covering of leaves within a dense forest of raspberry stalks full of tiny stickers. Upon first investigation you gather a few berries close to the surface and even reaching into the middle of the bush garnished a few more. But turn your head upside down and look at the bushes in this manner and you doubled your pickings. You would triple it by looking upside down and backwards. Each ripe berry waiting to be popped into your mouth. As delicious as the berries were fresh from their stem, I was willing to donate most of my bowl toward homemade raspberry jam. Jam that would be spread over toast and devoured during the winter, flashing back to your memory the savor of fresh picked berries. One week, one summer, our neighbors - the Birds - traveled on vacation leaving me in charge of their yard. This required watering the yard and flowers, weeding in the gardens and picking raspberries. Any and every raspberry picked during this time was mine for keeping and eating. Although my memory could be off I remember gathering a full large Tupperware bowl. What a treasure find. What sweet jam would be made, what delicious fresh berries with cream would be eaten - I am not sure if I was even paid for my work,the raspberries were payment enough.

Keeping a garden is a commitment to life, to your life -sustaining the summer fruits and vegetables for your bounty during the winter. A commitment to the life of the plants; nourishing, watering, caring daily, weekly, all summer long. Dad often would ask if it was worth all the time, water, and sweat; than in the fall seeing shelf after shelf of bottled goods, he saw the beauty of it. But keeping a garden is more than a commitment to the current passing year of life, it is a commitment to passing on life - tradition to your family, hoping they see the worth and vision. I have a garden, although small, it shares with me peas, lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, rhubarb and raspberries. Each year it gets a little bigger - this year I added rhubarb.

Anthony and Jana have a garden that covers every square inch of their tiny Baltimore backyard.

"I now have onions, peas, cucumbers, strawberries, sunflowers, and a few herbs starting to grow in the yard. I have raspberries and potatoes planted there—the potatoes are in a garbage can, actually. And I have seedlings for jalapeños, bell peppers, tomatillos, eggplant, and a variety of tomatoes about to go outside.

I may live in the city, but I will grow my own food." - Anthony Garrett

"Our garden is getting huge! So many veggies. Strawberries are gone, snap peas and sunflowers are here, tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, and zucchini will be ready in the next couple weeks, followed by the onions, potatoes, bell pepper, watermelon, and green beans later this summer. Yum. We love gardening. I never thought I would-- it seems like such an old lady hobby. But I love coming home from my morning run and spending some time watering the plants in my spandex while I wait for my heart rate to come down. I love how the sticky humidity, sunshine, and T-storms help the sunflowers grow inches overnight. I love watching all the different kinds of birds snack on seeds from our feeders, even if they spill food all over. I think the whole seed-->food process is pretty darn magical" - Jana Garrett

Aimee has a garden, Nate and her built box gardens, all on their own, toiling with their own hands.

"We built all the boxes today . We are going to plant peppers, tomatoes, squash, raspberries, strawberries, spices, onions and pumpkin. We are pretty excited. All we have left now is setting up our drip system and adding soil to the boxes and inserting the seeds." - Nate Berrett