Our Family Garden

We're making our second attempt at a fall garden.  We tried to keep it simple last year and had a decent crop so this year we're getting a little more ambitious: broccoli, spinach, cucumbers, butternut squash, carrots and most importantly, pumpkins.

As far as I'm concerned the whole thing can yield bupkis as long as we have pumpkins.  I don't want to eat them, I just want to look at them.  I've given up on it feeling like fall around here, but dang it I can make it LOOK like fall.  So we'd better have pumpkins is all I'm sayin.

In truth, I'm not much of a vegetable eater so a garden shouldn't be THAT important to me, but it is.  I think it has to do with the fact that my grandparents had a garden that yielded much of the food they ate.  Also, PB's grandfather had an amazing garden.  So I think it's gotta be in our blood somewhere.  (As an aside, PB's grandfather used to catch the squirrels in his garden and then drive them in his car up a hill to release them.  How great is that?)  

Most of all, I like the simplicity that a garden represents.  No driving to the store, moaning over rising prices and wondering what kind of pesticides were sprayed on the produce.  Just walk outside, see what's ripe and put it on the table.  

The older I get, the more I realize how little we need.  I think that's going to be one of the biggest challenges as we raise our kids in today's world.  I want my kids to be able to appreciate what is real and what matters and not be pushed around by boardroom marketers and a society that says that happiness comes by having the next big thing.

I'm not ready to chuck it all and move to a commune (not today anyway, I still love my TiVo), but one my goals for the upcoming school year is to SIMPLIFY.  I want to do/have/buy that one thing "less" so I can focus on the "more".  

So here's some pictures of the little sprouts in our little garden and our attempt at "less".   I'll keep you posted on the pumpkins.