I call myself a city girl, but I’m really not. I’m only one generation removed from the fields of West Texas where both Mom and Dad were raised. But Mom hated country life, and she and Dad moved into town as soon as they were married.
At first they lived in small towns. I was born in Merkel, a town so small that the only clinic was upstairs over the hardware store. The summer after I finished first grade we moved to Mesquite, another small town, but it was close to Dallas, so in spite of the local rodeo, some of the sophistication filtered into the suburbs.
Through the years, my country genes crept through from time to time. When I was single again I tried to raise a couple of tomato plants on the patio of my tiny, zero-lot-line home. An invasion of fat, green, squishy worms almost decimated my crop, but I managed to get a few scraggly tomatoes that my son used to make salsa. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
After David and I married, we planted some tomatoes and peppers in a flower bed. The peppers grew nicely, but some critter took a bite out of the bottom of every single tomato just as they were reaching the peak of ripeness.
Three years ago we retired to Emory, a tiny town in East Texas. The first year we were busy clearing fallen trees, briars and poison ivy, so I didn’t have time to think about a garden, but the second year my green thumbs started to itch. I missed the early planting, but before it got too terribly hot I planted some tomatoes and peppers. Again, the peppers did well, but I lost most of the tomatoes to critters, probably the large squirrel population that inhabits our 85 trees.
Some of my neighbors don’t share my enthusiasm, but most of them have gardened all their lives and have lost the childish sense of wonder that I feel when the first green shoots start to break through the ground. They’ve been there and done that, and most likely none of the traditional reasons for gardening will change their minds.
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