Food waste

A thought just occured to me.

Maybe it's so easy to waste food when you don't have to work very hard for it.

I am breaking my back and worrying and reading and learning and watching and waiting and watering my garden, and every little carrot sprout feels precious. I have never felt this way about food before - food has always been something I just get out of the grocery store. But now, food is something I'm laboring over, and it becomes more precious in the labor.

Today it poured rain....wet and miserable. It's supposed to be 80-90 this weekend. To me, that seems like an ideal combination: first, soak the soil, then let the sun come and warm things up to help things to grow. We will be in Spokane this weekend for Caley's graduation and I hope that when we come home things aren't completely toasted!

I've never worried about stuff like this before.

And on another note...
Not every inch of our yard is vegetables, fruits, or grass....we do have some borders and beds with flowers and whatnot in them. Yesterday, Tessa and I planted some columbine seeds in the back, and we planted two hanging planters (because I just couldn't bring myself to pay $20-40 for them; instead, we used potting soil, seeds, and flower starts and created two baskets from baskets purchased in previous years....one for the front, one for the back....right now they're spindly but hopefully in a few weeks they'll be more full and lush). It actually felt weird to plant flowers - where's the food? Funny.

Speaking of flowers and food, I picked up some squash (summer and winter) seeds, and the packets said that they would grow best if we attracted bees to polinate them, and suggested planting cosmos in the same garden plot. This sounds lovely to me! I'm actually going to plant the squash in the front beds - the ones with roses and lavendar in them. During the spring, those beds are filled with tulips, but in the summer they're pretty bare, and I think it'll be cool to have the squash growing along the ground, with lavendar plants bordering them, and roses coming up from the middle. I'll throw in some cosmos, and maybe Grandma Tess's daisies will bloom....and we'll have a crazy garden. Crazy like me, I guess...pumpkins and roses. What a combination.