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BREAD AND BUTTER PICKLES
My talents don't extend to vegetable gardening. I have tried in the past to plant seeds but that, which emerged, showed less than talent. Weeds instead of cucumbers grew. Sorry excuses for radishes popped up their measly heads.
Tomatoes, looking much less than Big Boys, hung on scrawny little vines.
If my vegetable garden attempts had been our soul source of food, we would never have survived. The word diet would not have to be included in my vocabulary. I'd be one of those emaciated chicks that grace the covers of
fashion magazines.
I've had neighbors whose corn has grown as high as an elephant's eye, their tomato vines needed arbors and Jack could never have climbed their beanstalks. Their soil was no richer than mine and they weren't raising cows for manure either -- so what was their secret?
I knew this couple that lived out in the country. They planted a garden every year. There were only the two of them, a couple dogs and a mother cat and her kittens, but they raised a garden that could feed them and the whole
west-end of town. Every few days their car would pull up and they would unload enough zucchini to feed China. If I wasn't home, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, onions and anything else they picked that day was placed at my front
door. They weren't only sharing their garden, they were flaunting their talent if you ask me!
My mother-in-law used to wake up early every Friday and Saturday morning and make her excursion to the local Farmer's Market, that assembled on K-Mart's
parking lot. She kept me supplied with green beans, potatoes, onions, corn on the cob and squash. As I cooked and baked, my face turned green with envy
I'm sure. What did these folks, that lived a few miles out in the country, have that I didn't have. After all, the people two doors down from us would sit out in their backyard with a BB gun scaring off the squirrels from their bounty.
My friend that lived across the street shared with me not only her vegetable crop but that of her folks as well. Then, when winter came, she would show off her canning talents. She made Bread and Butter pickles to die for. I
felt like crawling in a hole when she brought over her magnificent home made jars of goodies -- after I had eaten them first, that is! I not only can't grow a garden, I couldn't can anything from it if I did.
So now I've moved to Arizona, where they spray rocks green and cacti are the bounty crop of my neighbors. The soil is sandy and the yield is a whole community of ants. Fruit orchards are being replaced with apartment
complexes and the farmer's markets are missing from K-Mart's parking lot. I'm no longer jealous of my friends' and neighbors' plentiful produce -- there isn't any.
The green-eyed monster of envy is now erased from my life and you would think I would feel better. But, I miss those Illinois neighbors, their lush gardens, all the green vegetation, and the bountiful harvest they shared, even if they were showing off their talent.
I guess my talents will have to be harvested somewhere besides the garden! I sure would like to have some of those delicious show off Bread and Butter Pickles, over a little neighborhood gossip right about now.
Betty King
Gardening is about enjoying the smell of things growing in the soil, getting dirty without feeling guilty, and generally taking the time to soak up a little peace and serenity.
~Lindley Karstens, noproblemgarden.com
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Choose and plant azaleas and camellias while they're in full flower. Plant them high so the rootball sits slightly above surrounding soil. Mulch with composted fir bark.
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