Tuesday, August 25, 2009

How does your garden grow??

My mom always talked about their garden during war time and how the neighbors would share their produce with one another as they came into abundance . Well today we do the same with our neighbors. We all seem to have a great deal to share and each day it is a different rotation.

It's wonderful. One day our tomatoes will all decide to need to be plucked and the next our dear next door neighbor will have cucumbers to pass around. The neighbor across the street has summer squash all at once and the one down the street has zucchini ready to go!! I do not know about your neck of the woods, but our summer has had so much rain that the vining veggies have either gone crazy like some B movie monster by creeping across the entire property or have just given up and died from just too much rain beating down and rotting the stem
(I have no NORMAL sized vined plants). Today my neighbor practically begged me to take some {quarts and more quarts is her version of "some"} of several different kinds of peppers- mostly hot ones!! These were hand me down peppers given to her. So it is hard to say just how many hands these veggies pass through just in our own neighborhood!! I passed on that offer and told her to pass them on to someone else, as I didn't think I would use them. It's so fun and helps with every one's grocery bill too! And guess what else? We all grow organic!!!

So when I come up with zucchini the size of Bam Bam Flintstone's club- whether they came from my rain fed garden or from some other neighbor's pass around...I send them on to one of the neighbors who bakes, and it becomes zucchini bread and then gets passed around the neighborhood again!!!
Ahhhhh- the circle of life in a neighborhood!!
Victory Garden indeed!!

2 comments:

Julie said...

I loved this post. We too have more than we can eat and give away stuff to neighbors. It is also a great way to meet the people who live nearby since no one sits on their porches anymore.

Betty said...

What a great neighborhood you live in. We have orange and lemon trees and we share out fruit with the neighbors. There are only three or four familes that we talk to on the whole block though. Most people drive into their garage and then we don't see them again until they drive back out to go to work the next day. Gardeners do their yards so you don't even see them outside any other time. Kinda sad huh! As for veggies. You guys stole all of our rain and my tomatoes would get almost red and then hollow out. Maybe next year. You know what I wish?! I wish we were neighbors!