I miss my vegetable garden in Naperville. Yet, I’m not trying to have a vegetable garden in Texas because the ground around here is clay not dirt. (And maybe, if I were being truthful, I would admit that I’m not interested in doing all that weeding anymore.) It was fun to plant a garden at my home on Eagle Street. My husband, Terry, and I enjoyed having a variety of vegetables and sometimes we would experiment with growing pumpkins or watermelons. But the best things to grow were tomatoes.
We would plant a variety of sizes from cherry tomatoes to Big Boys. The first little tomatoes would start to be ready to be picked in the middle of July. I think we waited for that day with as much anticipation as a little child waits for Christmas in December.
Part of the fun was to plant enough so we could share the harvest with our neighbors and friends. One of our neighbors was a cute little girl named Riley. It was fun to watch her come over every day to pick tomatoes for dinner. I think she was as anxious as we were for them to be finally ripe enough to pick.
One year, our grandson, Daniel, was walking through the garden area before we planted anything. He was 4 years old. I could tell that something was upsetting him. Daniel was whispering to his older brother, Thomas, and I thought I heard him say something about brains.
I asked what was wrong. He thought I had planted brains in my garden.
I have no idea how Daniel would have known what brains look like, but he pointed to the rhubarb plants that were sprouting. When rhubarb plants start to sprout, you can see a tight little ball of bright red leaves that do remind me of pictures of a brain.
Daniel is now a teenager, and he claims to remember being terrorized in my garden. I hope he also has some fun memories of time with Gramma.
Have a wonderful July and I hope you have a friend who likes to share the things they grow in their garden.
