This week I am going to be writing about gardens. Yep, gardens.
~Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row.~
What a load of bahookie. I ain't never seen a garden with silver bells, and what the hey is a cockle shell? Pretty maids? More like smelly, chubby, sunburned, poorly dressed children.....Wade in the water. Wade in the water. Wade in the water....Now, my family which consisted of Mom, Dad, me, Mandi, and Sean lived directly in front of, or behind, depending on who's house you were at, my Uncle Johnny and Aunt Tina, and they had four boys, Shane, Ryan, Daniel, and Seth. We would spend our summer days playing ball, riding bikes, hide and seek, but mostly we worked in the 3 gardens between our two families.
Cock-a-doodle-doo! Rise and shine sleepy heads, time to go work in the garden. Pulling weeds, picking bags upon bags upon bags of green beans, bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels of zucchini. Tomatoes. Peppers. Jalapenos. Potatoes. Squash. Watermelon. Canteloupe. Corn. My family had two "small gardens", which if put together was about half the size of a football field, and my Aunt Tina, had one big one, about the size of our two. And for some cow dung awful reason, both Mom and Aunt Tina felt it necessary to plant large amounts of green beans and zucchini. Both are like weeds, they just keep growing and growing, and producing mass amounts of stuff. Each morning we would pick green beans, our backs would ache from bending over, our necks were scorched by the hot Missouri sun, we would pick and pick and pick, and occasionally pull up a green bean plant or twelve by the root...accidentally of course, hoping the production would decrease. But each morning we would wake up, and there would be more green beans! Just as many, if not more than the day before! Where in the name of Saint Peter do they come from?! It's like an evil Santa Claus. He comes at night while you are sleeping, and drops off bajillions of green beans. Then, after you pick them, the beans got to be snipped. So ya sit down, and ya snap off both ends and break it in the middle and toss it in a bucket. Every once in a while, you just grab a handful and throw them in the trash....saves time ya know.
The one and only good thing about green beans, is that you can can them. So you can taste the agony all year long. But not zucchini, it tis not so, you can't can it (can't can, hahahaha), and it grows just as wildly as green beans. So what does this equate to? Zucchini, in EV.ERY.THING. No lie. Zucchini always grows well; in a drought, it survives, in a flood, it survives. But give it prime conditions and it ruins your life. Tell ol' Pharoah, to let my people go!
One fine summer, not too hellishly hot, but not cold either; there was plenty of sun, plenty of rain, and the zucchini took over. Of course, everything else in the garden thrived as well, but it is the zucchini that imprinted itself in all of our young lives. At first it was awesome. We ate zucchini bread at every meal! Warm delicious bread, with warm drippy butter. Mmmmm. But then it started appearing elsewhere. In spaghetti, on sandwiches, in salad, fried zucchini, baked zucchini, parmesan zucchini, zucchini with ranch, raw zucchini. We ate it in cereal, on toast, with yogurt, with eggs, with cheese, with cake,with dirt....we ate it, and ate it, and ate it. We would go on drive by's with bags of zucchini, and throw it in people's yards like the Sunday morning paper. Only, the zucchini didn't limit itself to Sunday. No-ho-ho way. After we finished, hoeing, weeding, picking, watering, snapping, and canning. A driving we'd go. Happy Fourth of July, have a zucchini! Hope you get well soon, have a zucchini! Congrats on mowing your lawn this week, have a zucchini! The sun is shining, have a zucchini! You get the idea.
Since, we had such huge gardens, we of course, lived off the land, for the most part. Our summer meals were mostly vegetables, with hot dogs or bologna and cheese sandwiches, on white bread of course, with Kool-Aid always on tap. We were so healthy. O_o No wonder we were all large in stature. Every summer, this was our life. Other kids went on vacations. We got to garden. Not.Even.Fair. *folding arms and sticking out bottom lip*
But alas, all of this child labor was molding me (like shaping me, not like mold, on like cheese) into the crazy, hippy, wild woman that I am. I always swore I would NEVER ever ever ever, have a garden, ever. But, guess who is having one this year? Foshizzie. No green beans though.
Now before, anyone gets all hot and bothered, thinking my folks were some kinda slave drivers, and before anyone calls DFS on them, you need to realize, all of us kids are now fully grown, so calling DFS would do no good now. ;-) JK Mom and Dad. But, I think that all of the manual labor was good for us. And ok, maybe I was exaggerating a smidge, but now, I can look back with fondness and laugh, and say, "Oh man, I can't wait until I have kids." Just kidding...but really.
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