Dig and Bury

First blog, first post, first sentence.
Well, okay, that's over with. Much better. For introductions, I'm Sharon; I live in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, and my family and I have planted a vegetable garden. Every spring, I have these great aspirations to grow lots of fresh food for my family, and every summer, something grows - plants without fruit, harvests forgotten, and lots of weeds. I'm really good at growing weeds. So I have started this blog to encourage me to not be a slacker and quit. And I want to teach my children the value of food. Hopefully, along the way, I can entertain someone else. I am assisted in this venture by my very strong husband and 2 marginally interested children.

Last weekend, I went to my parents' home, armed with gloves, manure, seeds and family, and began to clear out their fabulous and overgrown garden in the back yard. It was covered with weeds, weeds, some dead okra from a previous gardening attempt, and a lot of wildly growing Chinese garlic chives. I pulled the weeds while my husband, Jon, turned the soil. We cleared out 3 1/2 plots, planted half a plot of asparagus roots and called it a day. Feeling pretty good about our progress, I exclaimed on my Facebook page that I am going to try to become a produce locavore this summer and feed my family only things we grow supplemented by purchases from the farmers' market. But California or Florida this ain't. I hit post, and then immediately start to think of the things that I will have to make exception.

The next day, we nearly clear out the balance of the garden and plant carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes, strawberries, and 2 plots of yellow corn. Very ambitious. I also have 2 or 3 varieties of tomato seeds that we can plant in the last plots and the Botanical Garden's heirloom plant sale is this weekend. My husband already has aspirations of a vast patch of melons, peppers . . . and I look over the garden and the vast clump of hoses in the corner that resemble an intimidating cluster of snakes, and I wonder if I can actually do this.

But here I am making my commitment before you all, that I will do my best to water this garden, pull out the offending weeds, and harvest all produce grown in a timely manner. I hope I don't let you down!