How Does Your Garden Grow?

     As much as I love to garden, I have never lived anywhere, as an adult, where I could grow a real vegetable garden.  Savannah was hopeless.  The heat, humidity, and sandy soil, (Or should I say sand with a little soil mixed in?) meant that everything I tried to grow pathetically straggled along, or just died. 
      Here everything grows great, but I don't have any space.  I have managed to sprinkle in a few vegetables every year in among my herbs and flowers, but it's mostly just for fun. 

     This year I let Anna pick what she wanted to have growing, and she chose crook neck squash, pumpkins, beans, and tomatoes.  I had to make a new spot next to the pool fence in order to fit in the tomatoes, and so far everything is growing nicely. (Although I don't expect to have a bumper crop of anything.)

     I think our pumpkin patch will probably end up taking over our yard, but that's okay.  She was very emphatic about wanting pie pumpkins, not jack-o-lantern ones, and is already talking about all the things we can make with her pumpkins.
     I think that growing even a few vegetables is important if you have children, because it teaches that food comes out of the ground, and not strait from the supermarket.  It also teaches what food should taste like.  After eating a ripe, juicy tomato strait off the vine, the tasteless ones they sell at the store will never measure up.  You can also learn a lot about what plants need to grow; what will hurt your plant, or make it grow better.  Worms and lady bugs are good, but those yellow beetles with the spots... not so good. And yes, we do hand pick and squish them.  No squeamish gardeners around here.