A Little Taste of Summer

Right about now is the time of year when winter fatigue starts to settle in for me. I’m tired of gray days, tired of short days, tired of wet and muddy, and I’m really, really tired of cold.

My mother was a gardener of both vegetables and flowers. This is the time of year that she would sit down with her seed and bulb catalogs and plan her gardens.

I, unfortunately, did not inherit her green thumb. House plants enter my abode kicking and screaming, knowing that their lifespan has been shortened considerably just by crossing the threshold. The few times I’ve attempted tomato plants have yielded no more than one or two runty, mealy tomatoes not worth eating.

Basically, I gave up long ago.

Then at the end of last summer, I stumbled upon the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.

You build a raised bed 4ftx4ft, divide it into sixteen squares, and plant a veggie (or whatever) in each square. No more tilling up your whole yard and endless rows of weeding, etc. (There’s more to it than that, but I’ll let you read the book.)

Fortunately, Craig is enthusiastic about giving this a try, so as usual he will be the brawn behind the project. If all goes well, I’m hoping to have some of these this summer:

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Well, I’m optimistic, at least! And I enjoyed that little glimpse of summer; hope you did too.

Seriously, if you are considering planting a garden this year, especially if this will be your first and you don’t already have a big garden laying fallow in your backyard, check out this book. It really looks like a brilliant why-didn’t-anybody-think-of-this-before method and gets great reviews on Amazon.