As a kid, I used to read the American Girl books, and there was one series that centered around a girl during the 40’s.  And as the books were supposed to teach lessons about our history, I vaguely remember reading about victory gardens. Ever since then, I’ve had this sort of happy dream about growing a garden of my own. Of course, growing up, my parents were obsessed with planting gardens and growing things, and I wanted nothing to do with it (nevertheless, I remember spending hours lugging gallon buckets of water across our three-acre yard to water blueberry bushes and other strange trees–why didn’t we just get a longer hose??).

But now that I’m all growed up and have my own home and my own kids, I decided to finally start a garden. This is something I had planned to do when we bought our first house in York, but it never happened. I did, however, weed around and trim some rose bushes in back, which gave me a small sense of accomplishment. Back to the point. Now, with Emma as my trusty sidekick, we set out to have a garden in this little 12×5 fenced-in area at the side of our house.

I let Emma choose what we should grow, and we ended up planting canteloupe, pumpkins, tomatoes, strawberries, and cucumbers.

Here is our sandy little garden area. We broke up the sand a bit, and added red edging stones to keep everything contained to our yard. I didn’t want it all washing away under the fence!

Here’s sweet Emma working. We got her a special pink pad to kneel on and keep her clean. It was a little windy that day.

Then we added some nice mulchy dirt over the sand.

And here’s Emma showing it off. Like the shoes?

This is really more of Emma than the garden. She was having a lot of fun. We both were.

And here it is after we got done planting everything. Clearly, we didn’t get enough stones to go all the way around (this is why you should measure your space first!). The wilty sad-looking things on the left are cucumbers, and on the right are strawberries. Everything else we started from seeds.

This is about a month or so later. Things are starting to grow. Emma found some seeds that were washed up.

Here she is again, showing her seed. I thought this was a cool picture. One thing I sort of thought about, but then basically ignored, was rainfall. You see, our house does not have gutters, so every time it rains the rain pours off the roof in a long line. Well, I just happened to plant quite a few seeds right in the line of fire, and it rained the first few days after we planted everything, effectively ruining any chances of those seeds growing. The cucumbers died pretty much right away, too.

Anyway, some things finally started growing (and we got grass in the rest of the yard, so that created a bit of a barrier for the end of the garden). Now, I’m not much of a green thumb, and I’m pretty impatient, and like to just wing things. So when the packaging for the pumpkins and canteloupe said to allow 8 to 10 feet between seeds, I said, “Whatever!” and planted them all about a foot apart. Here’s when I began to think that maybe those packages knew more about the growth of those little seeds than I do. Down in front, the pumpkins began taking over my strawberries.

Which brings me to another problem with the garden: creatures. I believe them to be mice, as I have seen them scurrying through our yard. On at least 3 different occasions the strawberries bloomed and grew fruit. Emma and I would look in wonder at the small white fruits, just beginning to ripen, and the next morning there would be nothing left but little stubs. This also happened to some bean plants we transplanted outside. We put them in the dirt in the evening, and by morning there was just a teeny stump where our plant had been. Rather depressing. I still have not done anything about it. Thinking of getting some wire fencing stuff to put around the garden. Maybe that will keep them out. Anyway…

Here is the garden this morning. Those pumpkins most certainly do need a lot of space. Now they’re headed for the yard. Surprisingly, the strawberries are actually doing better now. I think the big leaves from the pumpkins are shading them. No more fruit, though. At this point, I know I need to go in and perform some surgery on the intimidating pumpkins, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. It’s so cool how big it’s getting. But I also realize that it needs room. I must save it from itself. And maybe save the tomatoes, too. I think the cantaloupe died, as well. Honestly, I was never sure which was cantaloupe and which was pumpkin, so I guess we’ll find out if we ever get fruit.

Flowers mean fruit, right? I have lots of flowers, but I have this sneaking suspicion that I will never have anything edible from this garden. Well, it’s still been fun to watch grow. I’ll keep you posted!

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