Gardening

 We've entered that sweet spot of the summer when baseball has wrapped up, the crops are in the ground and growing, the temps are warm and toasty, and the garden is growing and producing.  I was thinking back over our years of gardening, and it just makes me smile....it makes me smile knowing that our garden brings just as much joy to Jack today, as it did when he was 4 years old and managing that little square of space like it was his own farming operation.  There have been years when, if it were up to me alone, the garden would have been a no go.  There was a season where it felt like we were just creating more work than we possibly had time for, but at the end of the day...we did it anyway...simply because of the joy that it brought our boy.  All of our boys, really.  But especially Jack.  Just as life goes....so have our gardens gone...some years producing an abundance, with hearty plants and not many weeds...other years struggling from heat and bugs and way too many weeds....each year teaching us something new about what to grow and how to grow it. And as the years have gone by, it has gone from being a really big job for mom and dad, to the boys now taking care of much of the work themselves.  For whatever reason, I've been nostalgic about the garden this year...each time I'm in it, having memories of past gardens....Jack begging us in early April to get started with fertilizing and working up the ground...regretting planting too early when the frost got to the plants...watching Luke's excitement as a little guy, every time he found a worm....the way Jack used to pack coolers full of his veggies to pass out to our friends at church...Chase's love for picking string beans.....the giant pumpkins...the insane heat that seems to be present every time our sweet corn is ready for picking...the feeling I had in my heart when this year, even though he could have gone himself, Jack still wanted me to go with him to pick out plants and seeds....and the list could go on and on.  So here's to the gardening season... and the all the memories it has given us over the years.