Igniting an old flame....

Gardening.....C'mon.  Growing up we had gardens in every house I can remember.  Flowers and veggies and fruit trees.  We had to weed and clip and prune and water and can and I don't remember hating it.  I couldn't wait until I was old enough to mow the lawn, or when it was time to separate bulbs, or cutting off limbs of unruly shrubs and trees.  I loved canning, and we did it old school style, hot water baths and boxes of mason jars where you had to wait and make sure the seal set by popping down on the metal lid.  We filled shelves with apricot jam and apricot pie filling from an apricot tree that produced mealy apricots, but those didn't go unused and I crave a good apricot pie with vanilla bean ice cream once in a while.  We had an apple tree that had lots of worms and tiny apples, but we peeled and cut up bags upon bags of these and then ground them up in with a hand cranked something or other and cooked them down to make apple butter, apple sauce or apple pie filling. (maybe that is why I hate apple pie, but why do I love apple butter??)  The gardens were best known for there ridiculous crops of zucchini and my mothers famous cookbook of 101 ways to cook them including the dreaded zucchini burgers, which as an adult now, I can see myself trying it out and maybe liking.  My family could not be vegetarians.  I still love zucchini casserole and prefer zucchini bread to banana bread any day, but not everyone in my little family agrees.  Long story short, we decided on a whim to go out and plant veggies.  Our backyard is mostly concrete and we rent, so we didn't want to do anything permanent.  We planted a tub of herbs (cilantro, basil, parsley) and a chili pepper because they all sounded good to me and lots of people have success with herbs.  Did I mention I am a plant killer?!?!?  Hearty is necessary. Then we bought some pumpkin plants for the kids to have their own Halloween pumpkins and cooked pumpkins for the holiday season.  Finally we got some butternut squash seeds.  I wanted to do at least some seeds and I love squash and I remember it being a plant that can over run your garden too. Perfect for me.  The kids had such a good time digging in what they called "poop dirt" because it had bat guano in it.

We are going to attempt to build a small planter for the pumpkins and squash, but the hardwood store in town didn't have any supplies we needed, so next week, and maybe pics if it turns out.  My other little project was inspired by Martha Stewart.  She (or the clever people she gets her ideas from) suggested planting seeds in egg shells and once they are ready to be planted, transport them to your garden.  The egg shells are biodegradable, not to mention cute for the spring/ Easter theme.  So we are planting some egg shell seeds and hopefully the spring up by Easter for some table decor.  When we bought our Prius 2 years ago they sent us a thank you card that was paper with seeds in it.  You rip up the paper, bury in 1/4 inch of dirt, water and in 2-4 weeks, flowers.  I hope it works considering how old they are.