My heart is shaped like a tomato…

Posted by Kelsey in Gardening.

When I was asked to start writing about my gardening escapades I felt some real insecurity. I’m not a writer, in fact I told Katie (the editor-in-chief) that I would preface my first entry with my favorite saying about myself;

“I can’t spell, I can’t grammerate, and I make up my own words”

That pretty much defines who I am, even when it doesn’t involve writing.

Since I’m not a writer I was immediately plagued with the thought of where to start, what is the most appropriate way to jump into this huge topic, what should I talk about first? So I figured there is no better place to start than where it all started, with my father.

I grew up in the suburbs where all the houses looked the same. Within that suburban landscape was my home, a home that looked just like all the others, a home that sat on a small piece of land just like every other neighbor within arm’s reach. The only thing that set us apart from all of our neighbors was that the small piece of land that our nondescript house resided on didn’t go to waste. Growing up with a person like my father probably set me up for my interest in gardening and whole foods. When my mother said that she needed a tomato, she ran out back, not to the grocery store.

My father has grown and still grows most of his produce on a piece of land that isn’t even measured in acreage but in square feet, and yet there is still room to let my dog run on weeknight visits and plenty of lawn left to mow. With proper planning and some patience, and of course years of experience, my father has grown a long list of things that we have either eaten, tried to eat, or looked at with questioning glances. As a child and young adult I had the luxury of knowing exactly where most of my produce came from.

When I finished high school I ended up moving to Orlando Florida with my boyfriend (now my husband) to attend college. This move would prove to be a rude awakening when it came to my food culture. I grew up picking tomatoes off the vine; I now found myself staring into the pale red flesh of a rock hard “tomato” under the florescent lights of an Albertson’s Grocery store, struggling with the fact that I was about to pay a ridiculous amount of money for something that I wasn’t even sure was edible. Even worse, there were people buying those tomatoes that had no clue what that tomato should be.

I have a big place in my heart for a good tomato, so please don’t hold it against me if I focus on that. There were other atrocities as well, grapes that were all brown and soft, squash that tasted like cardboard boxes sprinkled with brown sugar, onions that smelled like onions but tasted like nothing, green beans that were soggy and limp; this list could go on for another page if I let it. But the point is that I was staring into the face of what the large part of America thought was a tomato. Little did they know what they were holding in their hands wasn’t even close.

Like most college students, I didn’t have an excess of money and I was living in an apartment with nothing nearby that resembled grass. I honestly had no real knowledge of gardening, whether I had the space or not. I spent about 4 years living in Florida, eating like most of the United States, processed foods, milk from who knows where, and produce from Mexico that has been cross bred for travel endurance, not for flavor or nutritional value. This type of eating took its toll on me. I started having the worst case of acne I could have ever imagined, my cheeks actually hurt if I smiled at times, that’s how crazy my face got! I gained about 60lbs when I moved away from home; I instantly had stomach problems, and the fact that my stomach wasn’t fitting into my pants was the easy one to deal with. Needless to say, this switch to mainstream produce and boxed foods had some negative effects on my body, my mind, and my self esteem.

After living in Florida for about 2 years longer then I would have liked, my boyfriend and I moved back to Maryland, where I had grown up, where we had met and fell in love, and where my body liked to be. Upon moving back, Justin and I were about 2 months away from our wedding. We were hoping to buy a home, and my parents were generous enough to allow us to move in with them while we prepared for these huge changes. I was instantly back into the safe arms of my mother’s cooking and my father’s vegetables. My skin was slowly healing, with a little help from Proactiv, my weight was slowly dropping, and I mean slowly, and my mood was stable (aside from wedding planning and home buying). I was finally seeing a glimmer of sunshine in the distance of what had been a 4 year rain storm. I was having the realization that you most certainly are what you eat. I consciously saw these changes in myself and realized that I was never going to do to my body what I had done to it in Florida.

While we were house hunting Justin insisted on having some room to move, he wanted some land, God Bless him! He also eventually admitted that he wanted to be able to pee outside? (That question mark is appropriately placed, I grammerated that on purpose.) Justin grew up in military bases all over Europe and eventually settled in Florida for his adolescence. Moving away from Florida when I was finished with school was pretty hard on him, but he was a complete gem about moving back to Maryland. So I refrained from arguing with him or talking to him about how long it was going to take him to mow the lawn. If my new husband wanted some land, he was getting some land, and honestly rural settings pull on my heart strings. We eventually purchased a farm house that was built in 1870 set on a piece of land that is a little under 1 acre. Now that’s not a lot of land compared to most farm standards nowadays, but in comparison to what he and I both grew up with, this was a large chunk of God’s country.

We have now lived in our house for about 2 years. Last year was a failed attempt at creating a successful garden, due mostly to me not being patient and improper plant locations (those need sunlight to grow, did you know?).

So when I was asked to write about my gardening I was completely excited, because this year is my first real attempt at a garden that has been planned. So I will be documenting my steps along the way. I’ll post pictures and things that I learn, as well as some insight that my father may provide since he’s helping me this time around. Although I have a large plot of land for gardening, I beg you to keep in mind that my father has done much more with much less.

Gardening |