Garden memories

My parents always planted a huge garden and the pantry and freezer were full of homegrown food to feed a family of seven all winter long. (I'm the second oldest.) They also raised chickens and an occasional pig. I started helping at an early age, whether planting seeds or tending a baby pig.























But it wasn't all work on the Bishop homestead. I played with the dog, hung by my knees, and even dressed up in a crinkly bright yellow dress.




























My garden memories center on long hot days picking green beans, sitting on the front porch shelling peas, cutting corn from the cob in a steaming kitchen and running tomatoes through the juicer. My sister remembers Mom bribing us to work by promising to take us to the lake to swim once we finished. I suspect now that it was as much for her to cool off as for us.

So as an adult, I gardened, just not vegetables, other than a few tomato plants and some herbs.

Until this spring, when my husband plowed up a patch of lawn and fenced it in with chicken wire and announced that we were going to have a garden. (He also put in a clothesline so we could airdry our clothes. It must be a back-to-nature kick. Wonder when we will go off the grid?)

But I couldn't just let this prime soil go to just beans and tomatoes, squash and potatoes, eggplants and peppers. I decided that the fence must be disguised with morning glories.


It worked just fine for most of the summer as you see the morning glories on the fence in front of the squash.






Then the morning glories came into their own and overran my little garden patch.