Growing food

I would love to say that I have a huge garden and that I will not need to go to any farmers markets this fall because I have all the food I can eat here in my back yard. But sadly I can not say that. I come from a family who always had a big garden. But I have yet to have a big garden of my own. In our first house in Kansas I tried to have a few plants in a small area but there was too much shade and the soil had a lot of clay in it. So that failed...the squash and cucumber plants died and the tomatoes never ripened.

This year we are in a new house with lots of sun in the back yard so I wanted to do something. The people before us had the backyard landscaped and so it looks really nice. We have a hill in our backyard and so they made different levels with rock retaining walls. There are several flower beds on the steep part of the hill. We were a little worried about destroying the grass and making the yard look messy so we decided to just plant a few things in the flower beds. They took a while to get stared but things are looking pretty good now. I have eaten two or three cherry tomatoes, and the sun flowers look great. The cucumber looks ok but might not produce and the carrots are doing fine. It is fun to finally have something work out for a change...maybe my thumb is green after all.

On a side note I planted sunflowers last year too but we moved before they matured. I am really enjoying these this year. I planted them because my sister Maude used to plant them every year. Every time I look at them it make me think of her. She will be gone now for two years this fall.