Local food doesn't get any more local than your own backyard ...

Local food doesn't get more local than your own back (or front) yard.

I spent an enjoyable week over the winter laying out my garden plan for 2020. It's not your traditional garden laid out row upon row but I love it and I can't wait to get in it

I am a gardener at heart and I guess I come by this honestly as the daughter of a grain farmer who plowed the straightest furrows in the county and now swears every year that he will not plant a garden then proceeds to plant one anyway and even expand it 'just a little' to add a few new varieties of something or other. Every year growing up I was drafted to help plant, pick and process our family garden. I can't say I was on overly enthusiastic recruit at the time (my penance for this is listening to my boys squabble when I assign them their weeding chores for the week) but I've certainly made up for that lack of enthusiasm now. To me, a garden is art. The soil is the canvas and the seeds are the paint.

Looking back now I think the thing that most shaped my love for the beauty of a garden was watching my maternal grandparents work in theirs. They lived in a modest little house on a modest little city lot and made it into something extraordinary. In winter months when we visited their home the south facing windows were filled with seedlings of every kind imaginable and when we went back in spring and summer the whole yard was a riot of colours and scents. The vegetables were laid out in tidy rows in the backyard and I remember following my Grandpa Harry as he walked with his hands clasped behind his back, up and down the rows telling me what they were. The front yard was full of flowers of every variety, size, shape and colour and quite honestly I think I saw more of my Grandma Ida's behind than any other part of her as she always seemed to be bent over pulling a stray weed or pointing out a pretty bloom (nary a weed survived long in their yard). And nowadays when I have my hands deep in the soil and am busy about the business of pulling my own weeds, I find my mind often wanders back to their little city lot and I walk with them once again in their garden.

My Grandpa Harry & Grandma Ida on their wedding day October 9, 1949 

Your mind is a garden,your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.

Joy Stephens