So the gardens begin . . .

I was not a complete stranger to gardening when I started.  My Dad always planted a garden, usually one that was entirely too large, even for a family of seven.  With five girls, you would have thought that he would have had plenty of field hands to help out. Strangely enough, I don't remember my four older sisters and I actively taking part in any aspect of the garden besides occasional picking and frequent eating.  Dad, driven by his inner farmer, just took care of everything.  Our summertime meals would consist almost exclusively of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers floating in a golden pool of apple cider vinegar with an ice cube on top for extra chilly goodness, and fresh white perch fillets pulled almost daily from the surrounding waters of Back Bay.   It is funny, looking back on things now, that eating locally and sustainably wasn't a choice, nor did it require special effort.  If my father did not grow it, catch it, or shoot it, we usually didn't eat it.  My mom bought other meats from Ansell's, the local country butcher, and eating out was usually reserved for special trips "to town" when we left "the county" and ventured into Virginia Beach proper.   

So while I had a lot more experience with enjoying the fruits of the garden rather than the labor, upon our relocation to Hyde County I felt the best way to learn was to jump right in.  We moved in to the house in May of 2008, and by the time we got settled it was late July.  When visiting the local hardware store, my oldest son, then two years old, asked if we could grow pumpkins.  So we bought a package of seeds, planted them in little cups, transplanted them in a small patch in the yard, and a few months later . . .

Cole and Greyson picked their first homegrown pumpkins.  They weren't the prettiest or the biggest, and the plants had barely held on through an onslaught of squash vine borers, but there were ours. That was really all that mattered.

With the next year came the idea of raised beds.  I had been reading up on gardening all winter, and after being enticed by the glossy pages of seed catalogs throughout the blustery winter, I was more than ready to try my hand at real gardening.   The end result should only be attributed to beginner's luck and the unbelievable rich, black soil that makes Hyde one of the best counties in the state for agriculture.

Of course I planted way too much of everything, which grew into each other and out of the garden and into the yard.  Summer squash, winter squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, watermelons and cantaloupes were all intertwined in leafy embraces,  but it was green and mine, and I was proud!  The garden became one of the boys' favorite spots, because you just never knew what you were going to find nestled among the leaves.

Greyson and Cole never got tired of watching the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars make short work of my parsley, and I was more than willing to donate my fresh herbs in exchange for the opportunity afforded to my boys as witnesses to their metamorphoses.  The raised gardens worked beautifully for two seasons, but inevitably, I heard my father's voice emerging from my mouth -  "The garden needs to be bigger!"