Beauty in a Vegetable Garden

There are many benefits to vegetable gardening. Growing your own food is one good reason for digging in the dirt and becoming friends with a garden hoe. But there are other benefits as well.

I became acquainted with vegetable gardening when I was maybe two or three years old. I remember walking around in the big vegetable garden dad and mother always grew on the home farm. Pa especially and Ma too, would often stop their work in the garden and just stand and look at it. I thought they were just resting, but now I know they saw beauty in these rows of vegetables. They saw beauty in watching things grow.

As I got older and left home, I always had a vegetable garden, except for my college years and when I was in the Army. Sometimes my garden was only a few square feet. At one time, when our kids were growing up, we grew nearly a half-acre of vegetables.

In addition to the vegetables and their inherent beauty my dad always planted a few flowers. He especially liked dahlias. Big colorful ones. During the summer and autumn months that my mother was in a nursing home, Pa always took her a big beautiful dahlia. To help brighten her day, and help her remember earlier days when they gardened together. They were both in their 90s at the time.

Today, I usually plant a few zinnia seeds and a row of sunflowers in our garden. I like sunflowers. They are beautiful, easy to grow, and the birds like the seeds.


THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Grow a few flowers in your vegetable garden. They also add a spot of beauty.

UPCOMING EVENTS:


--August 7, 5:30 p.m. Downtown Madison Historical Museum. With Sue. Old Farm County Cookbook.

--Sept 8. 10 a.m. Mt. Horeb Library, Once a Professor.

Purchase Jerry’s signed DVDs and books from the Library in Wild Rose, Wisconsin (a fundraiser for them):

Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.org
www.wildroselibrary.org
Phone: 920-622-3835

DVDs: His latest Public TV show, One-Room Country School is now available. It’s based on his book, One-Room Country Schools (also available). Emmy Winner, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps (based on The Quiet Season book.)

Jerry Apps a Farm Story (based on Rural Wit and Wisdom and Old Farm books.)

The Land with Jerry Apps, (based on the book Whispers and Shadows,)

Never Curse the Rain, (based on his book with the same title)

The library has several of Jerry’s signed books for sale including Jerry’s newest nonfiction books, Once a Professor, Every Farm Tells a Story, Living a County Year (reprints), One-Room Country Schools, Never Curse the Rain and Old Farm Country Cookbook, and his novel, The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County. Also Wisconsin Agriculture: A History, Roshara Journal (with photos by Steve Apps) and Telling Your Story—a guidebook for those who want to write their own stories.

Contact the library for prices and special package deals.