How does your garden grow?

Well this past summer I've learned a very important lesson: I don't enjoy caring for flowers.

They're pretty, don't get me wrong, but I learned very quickly how many weeds a garden can produce in a very short time. Weeding is a full time job, and I couldn't handle keeping a house, a toddler, and a weed-infested garden at the same time. I think my other problem with flower gardens is that they don't seem to give back like fruit and veggie gardens do. I would much rather pick a ripe cantaloupe from my garden and happily eat it feeling like all my hard work paid off. With flowers, you pick them and put them in a vase, just to have them die a short while later. What I'm trying to say is basically that I'm a lazy weeder. And I'd rather eat cantaloupe.

My flower garden did do well for awhile...that is until the crazy Tennessee rain storms kicked in and made the weeds sprout more than the flowers. I had good intentions, I tried to weed when I could, but I just couldn't seem to keep up. Eventually, one side of my poor garden was so overgrown with weeds that Pat just put it out of its misery and mowed over it one night as he was cutting the lawn. The remaining flower garden lives on in weed-infested misery though, doing what it can to survive despite my neglect. My fruit and vegetable garden on the other hand? Well, that's another matter.

Pat planted a small garden in the backyard for me in early spring so I could try my hand at killing growing some fruits and veggies. I planted 2 cantaloupe plants, 2 tomato plants, 2 strawberry plants and a handful of red onions. Fast forward 3 1/2 months and I can proudly say that most of my garden is doing great. The strawberry plants were planted a little late in the season and never produced anything and unfortunately the red onions didn't do well in the soil, but the tomato plants have sprouted about 20 tomatoes and the cantaloupe plants? Well, they've pretty much taken over the entire plot.

This is actually a picture from over a month ago. We had some heavy rains recently and ever since then, the cantaloupe plants seem to have a mind of their own. So far, we've managed to get 2 ripe fruit from them but as soon as those two were picked, I've found about 12-15 new cantaloupe growing.



I haven't had to weed the fruit and veggie garden as much (big plus!) and it's already made up for itself by giving us some delicious produce.