I really love to garden.  If I were given a choice between cleaning my house or weeding my garden, I would choose the garden any day!  It must stem back to growing up in Oregon and helping my Grandpa Green in his garden every summer (kinda ironic...last name was Green).  We had the opportunity of sharing property lines and living directly over the wood fence.  Fresh vegetables all through the summer not to mention the fresh berries we were surrounded by...to die for!

Gardening in the Desert took some getting used to.  We really have it great here in the Desert, aside from the scorching months of July and August you can practically grow year round and when friends and family are shoveling snow in the Winter, I am making fresh salsa! There are times I feel like calculating the profit loss for my garden...but that really wouldn't be fair.  How do you put a price on time spent outside with your kids.  I'm not going to sugar coat anything...we've had some of our best arguments in the middle of that garden but we've had some pretty good laughs as well and we've seen what can happen when you care for and nurture a tiny little seed in the soil.

I decided this year I was really going to focus on planting fruit and vegetables that taste good to us.  Savannah and I dedicated one whole raised planter bed to watermelon and cantelope.  I was so excited to have fresh melon all spring and summer long! The plants flourished and bloomed and as the melon's grew, they began to look more like squash.  Come to find out my melon patch is a pumpkin patch!  I've always wanted a pumpkin patch...really...but it's never done very well growing at the tail end of the summer in our Desert heat.  Long story short...I've got a beautiful pumpkin patch full of about 15-20 pumpkins.  It's the middle of Spring and not one person in our house can say they care much for anything pumpkin!

My profit loss statement at the end of this growing season is not going to look very good...but this sure does!