Our Little Garden that Could

Sometimes I get frustrated that our garden doesn’t look the way I want it to, it is very unrefined.  At its best it’s a patch of bare dirt littered with bags of soil, mulch, gardening tools, a few beds and pots.  At it’s worst it’s the same but with large itchy weeds.  But what our garden lacks in style and beauty it more than makes up in what it can produce.

Lately I’ve been harvesting pound after pound of tomatoes and squash on a daily basis.  I have herbs that have taken over their pots growing out of them into the dirt beneath.  I have more chilies than what I know what to do with and even the strawberries are going strong.  But when you have lots of plants you get lots of critters too.  We’ve been battling bunnies that seem to have a penchant for our cherry tomatoes, horned tailed caterpillars that have tried (and failed) to decimate our tomatoes, fuzzy caterpillars that love my mint and mint like plants, and tons and tons of grasshoppers of all sizes. Cute little green ones no bigger than a peppercorn that seem to find their way down your boots and up your pants and large grey ones the size of my middle finger (quite appropriate since sometimes they make me want to give them the middle finger).  But none of these pests bother me the way the red ants and black widows do. Since J and I believe the pesticides are horrible we have had to do a lot research on the best way to battle these bugs.  We’ve used the shop vac to suck up spider webs and have actually stomped on any nests and spiders we see, we’ve used cinnamon oil and hot water to keep the red ants at bay, physically pulled caterpillars off of the plants to squash them and so forth.  But it’s all worth it for this.

I love that we’re teaching our daughter where her food comes from.  And it’s kind of amazing looking at this growing girl knowing that she is literally made of what we and our friend Farmer Tracey have grown ourselves.

And I hope that she continues to have a close relationship with where her food comes from.