City Girl Gets an Education
This summer, I asked some of the people on my crew if they would be willing to write a blog. This is Emma's contribution of Summer 07.
The City Girl Gets an Education
So until last summer, it had never occurred to me to think about how plants grew, how seeds were created or even how vegetables formed themselves. I was a city kid with no gardening experience; my only exposure to plants were the already grown impatiens my dad would buy in cell packs and robotically transplant into our garden beds. I had never thought much about plants, in fact, I remember as a kid watching a gardening show and thinking (this was probably my exact thought) "Geez, why would anyone ever want to garden? It just dies in the winter, what a waste of time!" Yeah. Flash forward to this summer, which has been an all out gardening marathon. I am the overly excited gardening geek on the crew – I remember most plant names and four days out of five, I get a "gold star" from Beth for correct plant identification. Sigh. And when I'm not getting paid to garden, I can often be found in my own backyard, watching the progression of my squash plants, or helping my snow peas find their way up the trellis. It's addictive, gardening. Watching things grow is AMAZING.
See, before I started gardening, I had no ideas that vegetables, like snow peas for example, grew out of the flowers that appeared on the vine. There was no connection between flower and fruit to me. The first time that I saw the way that a pepper plant flower starts to morph into an actual pepper, I was completely dumbfounded. I went home to explain the way the flower was changing into a pepper to my mom and she looked at me like "duh! How did you think they grew?" She grew up on a strawberry farm, so this was old news to her. But I think that pepper flower is what got me addicted to gardening.
So without any more ado, I would like to share some
recent
pictures from my own garden. It's mostly vegetables, with some flowers.
We just started it this year, so it's not really filled in yet. Though
our tomatoes are going somewhat crazy. Enjoy!
Emma's photos can be seen on her flicker account at
