A big garden

[Wilma]

Since Joanna is taking orders, I would like a handful of freshly picked peas, unshelled, so I can again have the experience of popping the shells and eating the peas.  Also, about 6 beets, a quart of freshly picked green beans and all the sweet corn that she can spare.

[Joanna]

Alright you guys!  I've got my eye on you now!  Okay, I may lose sight of you with the camo and all, but I'll know where you go to roost! 

Looking at my garden list, I may need to come have the rest of the yard plowed too; how will I ever fit all these delicious things in that measly little spot???  Oh my!   

Now here's the truth, I love to garden, but have mostly only grown tomatoes & peppers before, and green onions of course (all those fancy schmancy cooking shows call them scallions).  So, I may call on you for gardening tips later.  My dad grows great cucumbers and I can copy his climbing fence thing for that.  I have grown other stuff off and on, one year we even planted eggplant, but only used it for decoration.  I'm not sure of corn, I'm thinking it belongs out on a farm since it takes so much room...of course I do have that north half of the block I could get plowed...  I LOVE fresh peas, but haven't had much experience with growing them, and my favorite is green beans.  Oh, now I'm hungry again!

[Tobina+1]

My garden area is so hard and rocky that I finally gave up hoeing last year and made garden boxes.  (More use for those extra porch boards from the old house.)  Hauling the dirt into the boxes was long, hard work (one bucket at a time), but it seemed to work well.  It all started when the little soil I had hoed, washed away in our flood.  My poor tomatoes were barely holding on with their little roots.  But I put the boxes around them and filled them up with dirt and they took off.  Did you know you can bury a tomato plant deeper than the bottom leaves and they will still grow?  This year EVERYTHING gets planted in garden boxes, and it will also reduce the amount of hoeing I have to do.  Or bending over to pick weeds and veggies.  My dad is thinking about using big tractor tires for my grandma's garden this year. 

[Bonnie M.]

We set out about four tomato plants last year, and something just ate them all off.  So, I bought a couple of "patio" tomato plants.  (Much to Bob's chagrin, because they were kind of costly!)  After the summer, I moved them from the patio to the area where they would get sunshine and water once in a while, and, I'm still picking a small tomato off once in a while!  Of course, no more than they produced, it did make each tomato pretty expensive!  I remember looking at the pictures of Jo and Fred's tomatoes last summer, and I "drooled!"  Sometimes we have a good tomato crop, sometimes we don't!

[Wilma]

Tomatoes were the one thing my husband could raise easily and he couldn't plant just one or two plants.  You know, just enough for fresh tomatoes.  He had to plant enough to feed the whole county.  Luckily, tomatoes were one of the easiest things for me to can and we always had plenty of them.

As to people helping themselves to your produce, it does happen.  We had planted a garden at a house we had bought but hadn't yet moved into.  We had about 5 rows of green beans and when we went to pick them, one of the middle rows had been picked clean.  We wouldn't have noticed if they had skipped around here and there, but for one whole row to be clean was clearly suspicious.  We had our suspicions as to who had done it but it wouldn't have done any good to say anything.  Besides they probably heard that we knew that someone had been there, anyway. 

[Bonnie M.]

It's a little hard to believe, but there is an area here in Escondido where there's a "Community Garden."  People are somehow allowed to use a spot of land to plant flowers, or vegetables.  They tend to their own gardens, and I have never heard of there being a problem with people helping themselves to someone else's vegetables.  We also have fruit trees that are pretty much along the roads, and seldom ever do people stop and pick the fruit, that doesn't belong to them.  Of course, in the groves, there are people who will illegallyl pick the Avocados or fruit and make themselves some money by selling them.  I am naive enough to think that the majority of people are basically honest!  Probably, that's because I'm from Kansas!

[Wilma]

Only a certain part of Kansas, Bonnie.  I still have a lot of Sedgwick County paranoi.  I don't leave my doors unlocked when I am not home and my car doesn't set in the yard unlocked.  My garage is locked unless someone is in it.  Not the typical Elk County behaviour.

[Bonnie M.]

Wilma, I know a person has to take smart precautions, and not "invite" trouble.  When I was working at the Wild Animal Park, our guests were always losing something of value to them, and I don't recall a time when someone, either a guest or an employee, didn't find it and turn it in to security.  When the person called in to report it being lost, they would be so happy to hear that it had been found, and turned in.  And, I read about and hear about people accidently leaving their billfolds in a shopping cart when they unload their groceries, and someone will find it and turn it in.  I think there are a lot of really good, honest people out there, and it gives us all "hope!" 

[Wilma]

There are many more good people than bad.  We just hear more about the bad.  And with my paranoi, it would be the bad that would find my billfold.

[Bonnie M.]

I guess the moral of that story is just to "hang on to your billfold!"  I have always been a bit paranoid about losing my purse, or especially my billfold!  One time when my Mother was coming out to visit us, we met her at the airport in San Diego, and everyone had to say "hi," and all.  Mother sat down for a little while for everyone to greet her, and darned if she and we didn't go off and leave her purse sitting there, in the airport.  Mother had about $300.00 in cash just laying on top of the other things in her purse.  When we got home and she discovered she didn't have her purse, we got on the telephone and after several attempts, we finally reached security at the airport, and.....someone had turned her purse in, and everything was there!  Now, that's a "happy story!"  My husband and my son-in-law hopped in the car and drove right back down to the airport, and Mother was just so happy!  We all were.