The Secret Garden

Most people who were born and raised in Kingston and then move away to the big cities for college or work consider Kingston to be "God's Country." Well folks, you haven't truly been to God's country until you've been to Papa's house. He has been living a fairly 'green' lifestyle for a long long time now. He has a HUGE garden - I mean HUGE. He grows just about everything that you could imagine, all organically. Food tastes so much better when it is home grown and fresh! Papa uses chickens to control the bugs in the yard and also for the eggs. A fresh egg tastes quite different than the grocery store eggs. Papa has a name for all his chickens, rooster and any other animal that ever steps foot on his property. The rooster is named Tarzan for his interesting crow, one chicken was born dead and Papa did CPR on it and brought it back to life so her name is Lazarus, and the others I can't remember by name. He also has done physical therapy on a chicken whose legs was stuck to the shell - a man of many talents when it comes to chicken raising. He used to have a cow named Sir Loin and two piglets named Runt and Grunt! Anywho, back to the garden. He has a bee hive to pollinate the garden, a worm bed or worms (obviously) to help aerate the soil and a compost pile to add nutrients to the soil. Nothing goes to waste in his house - it's either recycled, fed to an animal or taken to the compost pile!
If you recall back in January, Adam and I decided to get a little greener. We use mostly non toxic cleaning supplies, we are recycling fends, we try to conserve water as best as possible, and we bought energy the efficient washer and dryer. So furthering our greenness and with the price of food going up every day I decided that I wanted to start a little garden. I need Papa to come help me get it started next year, but I did decide to take some of gardening on upon myself.
Mom sent us some watermelon slices a few weeks ago and I thought I would try to see if a watermelon seed would grow in a little flower pot that I had. Well, it did! I was pretty shocked. It quickly outgrew the flower pot and earlier this week Adam and I had to transplant the watermelon plant into the back yard. After the first day the plant was looking a little weak and I started to get worried that it would die. Adam and I have really been trying to take care of it and now it appears to be perking up! I hope we have a warm fall season because it takes about 3 months for a watermelon to grow and I am worried that the cold weather will kill it and it's not exactly watermelon growing season right now!

Watermelon Plant in the backyard!