It’s not where you live, but how you live.

Note to self: A girl never needs more than one cherry tomato plant. Any more creates an impossible amount of cherry tomatoes to cook with, eat, or give away, and duh, they are too small to use in salsa or homemade marinara sauce. Girls who have three cherry tomato plants as well as one hanging on her former horseshoe coat rack (now a nifty garden decoration holding lots of beloved plants) is going to have to serve that nice sauted cherry tomato recipe every week for months. Uh Oh…. Only the most devoted boyfriends will pretend to love your green thumb and your cooking that long.   


Note to self: When you have more than 50 hot peppers on a plant, or a dozen jalapenos, or more than 6 huge green peppers, all at once, you may want to consider harvesting and changing the evening’s menu to include pepper soup with pepper steak and pepper salad, and of course, pepper pudding for dessert.



Note to self: One small eggplant does not a meal make. Get creative. And remember – fast food is a matter of walking out your front door, picking some tomatoes, peppers and basil and throwing together something quick and easy and good for you.


Note to self: Wait to see if your cucumber plant goes crazy and takes over an entire fence before you decide you need to buy four more starter plants just in case…….. and start collecting pickle recipes cause if flowers are any indication of the future, a windfall of cukes is on the way.

Note to self: You learned in Georgia that you can never use up all the squash and zucchini on even a few plants, so planting a dozen just because they come 6 to a tray is gonna make you like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice – drowning in buckets of squash instead of buckets of water. 

And next time your bean plants look done in, you may want to wait to replace them with brussel sprouts, because if only one bean plant survives, you will then have to come up with dishes that only require a few beans, and that is no fun….

Most important note to self: It doesn’t matter where you live. What matters is how you live and if you keep your priorities intact and your focus on what you want from life. We all plant seeds. The garden we do or do not harvest after the fact is dependant upon hard work, diligent caretaking, and your willingness to get your hands dirty to create a life of poignancy and creativity. Oh, and do all you can to keep out the weeds. And don’t open the gate for those who like to stomp on tender things, just because they let their own garden wither and crumble and they were so impatient for signs of growth that they nurtured weeds instead of more worthy plants!