Readers Who Write

Thirty years ago, like so many others, I moved from California to Oregon. For years I had been living in a condo with only a balcony for flowers. When we moved, what I wanted most of all was to raise a garden. I had grown up in the country, my mom always had a big garden and I “helped” her.

So, we moved to a big old house with a nice sized yard and garden space. No one had lived there for awhile and the garden space was full of weeds, but underneath was wonderful rich soil. We bought a hand cultivator at a garage sale and made the garden space ready for planting. It was too late to start seedlings so we got transplants and filled the garden with, among other things, zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes, and built wire frames for green beans and peas. It looked so pretty and was a joy to pull weeds and wait for a crop of veggies. Little did we know that four zucchini vines would produce so many.

Someone told me the Ashland joke: Don’t leave your car windows down when you go downtown in the summer or someone will fill your car with zucchini. So true.

We were blessed to be able to raise our four grandkids and they helped in the garden, especially harvesting potatoes. Once, we tried raising purple potatoes but the kids weren’t too fond of purple mashed potatoes.

Alas, the kids grew up and the big house felt empty so we moved to Medford.

My gardening days were over except for a few flowers on the patio. But I look back fondly at all the veggies that I grew until the deer jumped the fence and ate most of it.

When they first showed up to eat apples from the two apple trees, I named them Bucky and Buddy. They would munch a few apples then nap under the trees until they decided to add veggies to their diet. That was the end of my gardening.