Growing Up

I am sitting at my kitchen breakfast nook, packets of seeds littering the table, pen in hand, planning our garden for spring.

We put in a small (2x6) test garden last summer, with four tomato plants, two watermelon plants, four zucchini plants, eight pepper variety plants, and four herb types. The purpose of this "test" garden was to see if we could, indeed, coax anything from the earth.

We framed out the size of our garden, tilled up the earth, mixed in organic gardening soil, and stirred in a witch's brew of bone and blood meals to nourish our new plot. We said magical incantations ("Please, please, work!") and held our breath. We kept our fingers crossed.

We cheated.
We transplanted small plants, purchased from a local market. We were actually just trying to get the gist of gardening, and see if we could keep our produce alive in the ground. We held our collective breath.

It was a success.

We actually had tomatoes, a wealth of zucchini, and a few small, (think wad of notebook paper sized) watermelons. Our peppers were plentiful and our herbs proliferated.

We were highly pleased with ourselves.

So now, at the veritable close of the gardening year, our thoughts turn to next year. The things that we didn't do, and the things we're going to do next time. The things we planted and didn't plant. It's very exciting, leafing through the Farmer's Almanac, planning our "for real this time" from seed garden. It's going to be bigger, and we're planning more vegetables.

It occurs to me, having spent the last two hours planning and dreaming of this future garden, that this growing of one's own produce, could become quite easily addictive.