Gardening: "My Garden" - Part Five, Vegetable Garden 2011

It is fitting that I end the "My Garden" series with the garden that always has been, and perhaps always will be, a pure gift of a garden: the vegetable garden. I am a complete novice at planting veggies, in spite of being around vegetable gardens my whole life. My brown thumb comes shining through when it comes to tomatoes and peppers, so Mr. Farmer handles the whole thing almost exclusively each year. The vegetable garden is "mine" because he gives it to me.

As I mentioned, my brother-in-law gave me the wonderful, if premature, gift of tomato and pepper plants this year. They were so beautiful that we just had to be sure they got into the ground on time. The weather was less than cooperative, so we ended up bringing the plants inside one night while Mr. Farmer and the children prepared the bed. Young Master Farmer brought many loads of good soil to add to the existing bed, and Mr. Farmer turned it over. When all was ready, he planted 8 tomato plants and 6 sweet pepper plants. It is my understanding that some of the tomatoes are Roma (plum) tomatoes, and that one tomato plant should bear yellow fruit!

We are going all out with the tomatoes and peppers this year. We traded the extra plants for some cucumber plants from the next-door neighbor, but we planted the cucumbers in the herb garden to give the tomatoes the best possible chance. Mr. Farmer even plans a series of stakes, connected by strings, for the plants to grow on. I am still a little unclear on how that is going to be set up, but I promise I will share as soon as it is set up!

Isn't it Beautiful?

Conclusion:

I decided to write the entire "My Garden" series before publishing any of it. I usually ask Mr. Farmer and the children not to look over my shoulder while I type because it distracts me. And while I may ask him questions about this and that (and when he asks why, I respond simply, "It's for the blog,") he generally does not see my posts until after I post them. Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard him tell one of the children to "bring a load of soil for your mother's garden" through the phone while I was at work one evening during the process of writing this series. I thought I heard a smile in his voice when he said it. I thought that maybe somehow he knew. But did he?