Victory Garden

–noun

a vegetable garden, esp. a home garden, cultivated to increase food production during a war or period of shortages.

When my father retired from the police department back in 1976 you would have thought he was living an episode of Green Acres. While Dad was not a lawyer trying to live the simple country life, he was raised in the city, was a cop until he retired, he imagined himself a gentleman farmer for oh about a year or so.

We planted a Victory Garden, bought chickens, two cows, and had two goats. I really didn't have much to do with the garden. Mom and Dad were kind of nastalgic about it because back in WWII people were encouraged to grow them. Our budget was so tight Dad thought if we could just raise some food it would help things out.

I didn't do the gardening but my brothers and sisters did. Once things began growing they hardly did any work to it really. Once things were ready for harvest I was baking and cooking like a real fool. Every day I would gather about a dozen eggs. There were nights I had zucchini and had to look for any and every recipe I could find for it. We had so many vegetables they were actually rotting in the field. I'd never learned to can anything but I was sad when after that we never had another victory garden.

I guess I would have felt differently if I had been out there working the garden. Ths year, after watching all these docmentaries about Monsanto and hybrid fruits and vegetables, Darryl and I are going to try our hands at gardening. That's right this year we are going to have a container garden. We feel it will be better for us because we won't be using harmful pesticides.

I won't get the same amount of publicity for having one as Michelle Obama. After all she's growing a Kitchen garden. (a garden where vegetables, herbs, and fruit are grown for one's own use.) We do plan to veg-up our summer though. We're doing it for our health but also to make a quasi-political statement. We are concened about HR875 Read the original bill here. The name of the bill "Food Safety" sounds good and might make you wonder why anything would be against it except the government can even come onto your property to find out how your garden grows. Thanks but no thanks.

Some people are contemplating growing their own veggies because they feel that we our financial institutions are collapsing and we should raise vegetables to sustain us. Darryl argues that we should grow a survivalist garden. A survivalist garden will have nut trees, fruit trees and berries and most types of vegetables. The vegetables in the survivalist garden will contain several that have a high protein count such as chickpeas, sunflowers for their seeds, and pumpkin. Pumpkin gives you a "twofer". You can use the shell for pumpkin pie puree, the filling for pumpkin pies, and also for their seeds.

Darryl suggested that I keep track of what we spent on the garden and how much time we spent. Today we bought a bunch of vadalia onion starters. That cost us about $3.99. We also bought potato starters and silver queen corn seed. Altogether that cost us about $8. We also bought seed packets of broccoli, tomatoes, squash, lettuce, and peas. That cost us about $5. The dirt for the containers cost us $3 a bag and we used two bags. Most of the containers that we used we'd had form a few years ago. We did use three new ones that we had bought not too long ago for $5 a piece. Of course these things are reusable to next year we will be able to factor these costs out.

Darryl also feels we should factor in the cost of our time so I will say that we spent an hour planting everything that we planted today. We still have lots to plant but can't do that yet because it's not time to put those things in the ground yet.

Today was the last day over at the house in Acworth. Not that we spent time there this week We didn't. We drove by the house to make sure we got everything that we came with and then we drove away. I walked to the bottom of the street like I used to. I stared out at our beautiful view. I said goodby to my house and tried not to cry.


Here are the blog contets I entered:

Rain-X Latitude Wiper Blades, Rain-X Weatherbeater 2-in-1 Glass Cleaner & Rain Repellant, and Rain-X X-treme Clean

Prizes (5): Copy of Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to Clean like the Dickens by Thelma Meyer (ARV $19.99).

Prize: Max Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels DVD.

Prize: World Championship Games video game for Nintendo DS.

Prizes (3): Garbage - The Revolution Starts At Home DVD.

Prizes (3): Spa Break gift basket with Fiber One Chocolate Mocha Chewy Bars, bath pillow, chocolate scented soap, lotion and bath salts and coffee scented candle.

Prizes (5): Finish Quantum Powerball dishwasher detergent tablets.

Prizes (3): Hannah Montana: Keeping it Real (Vol. 5) DVD.

Prize: Friends Forever doll (ARV $59).

Prize: Zenses Ocean video game for Nintendo DS.

Prize: Magellan Maestro 4350 GPS (ARV $399).

Prize: Choice of eyeglasses from EyeBuyDirect.com [excluding designer frames and sunglasses] (ARV up to $100).