Our Family Garden Grows More Than Food

This picture doesn't look like much to most folks, but to our family it means soooo much. This land is where Sunny (and her two brothers grew up). To us, that garden patch -- especially the one to the right -- is healing ground. It is sacred. What grows there, grows more than food. It grows family.

That plot of soil is what remains of a nearly two-acre garden that grew on this land for almost a century in Dalton Gardens. Even that small plot went gardenless for nearly 20 years. Which began just about the time, I took my wife away from her parents.

But we got Sunny's parents to put it back into production last year. While it produced bumper crops of produce, it also helped to pull a family through the tragic loss of very close loved one. Before she passed, though, she got to help with the garden one last time; and one of her last full meals came from that right side of the garden.

It was such a healing force for my wife's side of the family, we decided to expand it this year. That is the patch to the left. We are going to put in two 12 x 4 foot raised beds behind the bean poles for salad greens, too. This is "Our Family Garden," but Sunny and I will also do one of our own at our place in Post Falls.
You can also see by the picture above that Sunny's father is putting up an electric fence to keep the deer out. We plan to get our cold crops in about mid-April this year. And Sunny is getting a jump start on the warm crops in her new green house this year, but I'll encourage her to blog about that later...

Until then, here is a quick picture to pique your interest.