My great-grandma grew green beans. Grandma liked flowers and indoor potted plants. Mom was totally uninterested in growing anything. Dad grew tomatoes -late in life after his retirement. This was the extent of my training for gardening. So what possessed me to tear up the back yard ten years ago with the idea in mind of growing my own vegetables when heretofore, I had attempted to grow only flowers and house plants -with nominal success? Inasmuch as I was 41, I could hardly classify this act as "hubris of the young". But I had always loved farms and I consider myself to be a country girl at heart. Openness, quietness, no neighbors for miles, wrap-around porches, wind chimes, and the neatness of the rows of growing vegetables was my idea of good living. Then too, my father had always spoken his own desire to own a farm and as a man of vision and an intense entrepreneurial drive, he had consistently framed this desire in terms of economic security and practical needs. Having access to y...
