PLANTING.......THOSE WHO GARDEN, GROW.

Large gardens are "grand", but we just don't need the work or the produce.  I still like planting and growing and eating the home grown things also.  

Each time I think I am cutting back on my plots, I decide to plant something else.  My garden now is a six foot square around the flag pole.  I can plant tomatoes, peppers, a cucumber plant and some herbs which is plenty for our enjoyment and my keeping up with the hoeing and weeding and watering.  This year I plan to put all of that in and than on the edge plant some lettuce and also a row of pretty sunflowers.  It will all fit.

My potato patch has been able to hold "too" many rows of potatoes, even if they are delicious.  I also used to plant a fall potato patch, but cut back on that last year.  This year I am doing 45 hills not 60 and on the edge of the patch I am putting in a row of yellow/orange raspberry bushes.  I know they take work, hoeing, weeding, but so do the potatoes.  The wild black raspberry patch in our woods behind the house do well all on their own, but I am thinking to maintain in a garden plot, I will have to work at it.  My other thought is that I could just plant them in the middle of the plot and let them take it over.  Those thoughts pass as I think of my delicious fresh red potatoes. 

With all this said, I like to garden, flowers, trees, plants.  I enjoy the work at a limited amount I can maintain in the neat fashion I like them to be in.  I have several flower beds that I also have to maintain but they are looking so much better since I cut back and have retired.  Each day I can get out and putty in the gardens and enjoy my "hobby" of gardening.  It is no longer a job to produce all I can for our family, to eat, to can, to freeze.  It is a fun exercise of "loving" these plants and enjoying my country life.

Even if you can only have some patio plants, go for it.  Enjoy the green, watching them bloom and maybe even produce something to eat.  You learn to appreciate sunshine and rain also when you grow.