The garden I am writing about is across the street, and two doors down, at my neighbor’s house. Our garden is not in yet, so I can not write about it. It is in her front yard, at the bottom of the hill. It runs down next to their barn driveway, about three or four feet away. It is fairly long, but not very wide.

She plants corn, carrots, and potatoes in the garden. She also grows tomatoes, radishes, and a few other fruiting plants. She also plants rhubarb, broccoli, peas, cabbage, and lettuce. Also, cucumbers, and some melons, such as watermelons and cantaloupe. The garden has no structures, besides the cages to help the tomatoes and flowers grow.

The garden is important to me, because I used to help her out with it a lot in the past, and I still do every now and then. Whenever I’m not doing anything “constructive,” as my mom always says, I am usually out helping my neighbors, and she is my first go-to on that. Sometimes if we helped out enough, my neighbor will bring over green beans, peas, cucumbers, or anything else that she managed to harvest from her garden. It’s important to them because it’s another part of their food source. If we’re over there, most of the time she’ll invite us in for some freshly-baked cookies. So we’ll all be over there socializing, and eating nice, soft chocolate-chip cookies with each other. So we really enjoy going over to help out.

My neighbor is the main person who tends to the garden, but sometimes me and my family go over to help out. She will have her husband use the tiller on the back of their lawn tractor to till up the garden and get it all nice and ready. Then she’ll water it right before planting the seeds. She’ll space them all out, one by one, three-to-four fingers apart so they don’t intertwine with one another. Then she’ll cover up all of the seeds, put the cages down for the stalk plants to grow around, and if we’re over there, most of the time she’ll invite us in for some of the freshly-baked cookies.

The most fun part is picking the freshly grown vegetables after they’ve fully ripened. We all go out there with bowls, and sometimes my neighbor and my mom will use aprons because our neighbor is out of bowls. We’ll grab everything that is ready and go inside. She’ll wash them all up, make us some salads, and we’ll all enjoy the harvest together. Sometimes afterwards we’ll go outside to their pear tree and get some nice, fresh pears, go back inside, wash those off, and eat them as well. The pears are nice, juicy, and VERY large. Some almost the size of apples.

So, that is our neighbors’ garden, and how we interact with it-and them-together. Ii is always fun going over there and helping out, and getting a few treats after . . . and I can’t wait to do it again this year!