Tuesday --- Memories

I remember the first time we tried to plant a garden after we moved to the mountains. About the last week of May Mom dug up a spot in the back yard and we put in radishes carrots lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes. Oh, and green onions. That spring had been pretty mild and the snow had melted early except in the very shady areas. The digging was hard because the ground was still a little hard from being frozen.
Mom thought she was choosing the kinds of hardy plants that would be okay with the short growing season that we would have. She covered the beds with something at night (I can’t remember what, but maybe it was burlap) and uncovered them during the day.
I was pretty young, about 6 or 7, and was not much help but I loved the watering and digging in the dirt. Then I would look at my hands and see how dirty I had gotten and run into the house to get cleaned up. I still can’t stand for my hands to be dirty for long. I love the feel and smell of the soil but not for long. I wasted so much time running back and forth that I never got much done. Mom probably thought I was a hindrance more than a helper but she let me help anyway.
When the little plants started to pop up out of the ground I was so proud it was like I had caused it all by myself. The late frost had killed some of the seeds but some of them made it and hung in there to become plants. We got plants from all of the eyes of potatoes that we had planted and the radishes and carrots were doing good The onions and lettuce were slower and the tomatoes did not do much at all.
In July we had radishes and green onions from the garden. The carrots did not develop into carrots really but the tops grew and were pretty. By the end of August it snowed and we dug up the potatoes. They were about the size of a ping pong ball and we did not get a lot of them.
Mom learned a great deal that summer about high altitude planting. It was a bunch of work for very little harvest but what we got was very tasty.