Trying Real Hard To Adjust

“So he grows a little garden in the back yard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don't make no sense.”

The Bellamy Brothers had quite a few lyrics I do appreciate and can relate to, being a hard headed Southern Boy “You Aint Just Whistling Dixie” is one of my favorites but that will be another post one of these fine days.

You just have to love fresh vegetables and working in the garden, heck I just love getting out into the middle of nature and enjoying what the Good Lord has to offer for us, digging in the dirt with your hands and enjoying the blessings of watching what you planted, reaping what you sow as they say, I just love to walk outside sometimes to stand and enjoy the view, Cindy says I am a person who is outstanding in my field and that is where she finds me sometimes when I turn up missing, out back standing in the field, but that’s OK I am having a good time.

The last year we lived in New Mexico I was feeling up to attempting growing a garden, I dug up a small area next to the house and began the process of preparing the soil, my tiller was a shovel and I wore myself out turning that dirt over, I went down and bought a few bags of steer manure and worked it deep into the soil, not to over do it I bought six tomato plants, three crookneck squash plants, and a bag each of carrot and radish seeds, I planted the squash in a small triangle at the front and the tomato plants two each side by side and three deep OK this didn’t leave me much room so I made small rows between the tomatoes and planted the carrots and radishes, OK now the room I didn’t have at the back was filled with sunflowers and four-o-clocks, OK my planting was done and it looked nice, little did I realize that it was going to be a good year.

You already know where I am going here it wasn’t long before I couldn’t see the side of the house, the tomatoes were six feet tall and the squash had intertwined themselves together and had begun to take over the driveway while at the same time had crept into the neighbors yard, heck I couldn’t even find the carrots and radishes but the sunflowers were sure pretty, I told Cindy I would be out in the garden and off I went to prune some of the limbs from the tomato plants that were doing us no good other than making it appear I had a tomato hedge growing down the side of the house, suppertime rolls around and here she comes to call me in, I am actually standing between two plants tying up a limb when she steps around the house and says “Jimmy supper is ready” I reply OK and she looks and off to Virginia’s (our neighbor) she goes, I figure she would be back soon so I continued working it wasn’t long before I hear her calling my name as she is returning from Virginias, I am in trouble now because she thought I had answered from Virginia’s house and she had never seen me standing there in the jungle, I laughed and said that I had been there the whole time. A valuable lesson was learned here, don’t ever put that many plants into a space 3 foot by 20 foot and not expect them to take over, six tomato plants in a good year will produce more than you can eat, and so will three squash plants, we actually had neighbors refusing any more veggies because they had no more room to store them.

After moving to California a little over a year ago our gardening was limited to a couple squash plants and three tomato plants in pots last year, we have now gotten brave and tilled up an area out back by the fence that measures about twenty five by twenty five foot, it is now Cindy’s Parents, she and I so there are four people depending on our gardening skills and from the lessons learned earlier we have a package of corn seeds, about ten tomato plants, and the same number of assorted squash and zucchini plants, Cindy wanted some bell peppers so red, yellow and green were purchased for my wife and I just had to throw in one each of cayenne, chili, and jalapeno peppers.

You don’t think I am overdoing it do you?

"He's an old hippie...his new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust."