today's harvest

we always had a vegetable garden while i was growing up.  my father was chief farmer, in the suburban sense of the word, as he did all the planning, clearing, hoeing, planting and much of the motivating.  mom was the harvester, canner and dinner maker creatively using up our bounteous garden produce to serve to her large brood.  mom made homemade ketchup, (I have yet to taste any ketchup better than hers) put up dozens of canned tomatoes, simmered and canned applesauce from our fruit trees and whipped up jams and jelly from the berries.  i remember her creating braided onion swags and hanging them in the pantry.  the kids, all six of us, were the weeders.  each summer saturday there it was, firmly planted at the top of the chore list, weed tomatoes, weed strawberries, weed beans...to be avoided at all cost!  my eight year old mind in full gear trying to get my head around the actual reason for gardens, "Why can't we just buy it all at the grocery store?"  But somewhere in those saturday chores i learned lessons.  i learned many lessons.  the least of which is that there is rarely a more satisfying feeling than heading out to the vegetable patch, picking a bright and cheery prize from the seeds lovingly planted months ago and eating it for dinner, fresh from a weeded garden.