Adventures in Gardening

"Let's do a garden this year," my dear hubby said. "It'll be a good learning experience for Miss Scarlett, and besides, it'll be FUN!"

So we went to our local home improvement store, bought some lumber (because dear hubby wanted a raised bed garden), what seemed to be a ton of soil, seeds, and supports. "Think of all the money we'll save on groceries," I told dear hubby, almost giddy with anticipation. We flew home with our gardening goodies.

So we dragged the bags of soil over to the garden plot and emptied them out. Miss Scarlett helped us plant the seeds...tomatoes, cucumbers, Kentucky Wonder green beans, corn, carrots, and radishes. We don't particularly care for radishes, but we heard that they were fast growers and would keep Miss Scarlett interested in the garden longer.

After many evenings of "discussing" who watered last, we finally saw some sprouts. Miss Scarlett was beside herself with joy. She had a garden with food that she grew "all by herself"! I have to say, even I was impressed with what I foresaw as a bountiful harvest. I could see Miss Scarlett and me putting up loads of veggies with my mother-in-law helping us. Dear hubby beaming with pride. Such a sweet domestic tableau.

In actuality, there was no bountiful harvest. What we got were some deformed corn that looked like it was an experiment from a nuclear lab, lots of yummy tomatoes, four or five squinchy carrots, one cucumber, two messes of tough green beans and a gazillion radishes which were so hot we couldn't touch them.

Were we disappointed? Maybe just a little. All in all, we considered it was success. At least we had some fun family time and a bit of gardening adventure. We learned a lot about what NOT to do when planting a garden. We have high hopes that our next attempt will go off much better. We can hardly wait now to put out our fall crop and see what comes up!