Well, for those of you who know me pretty well, you know I like to have a garden. While we were in the apartment in SLC this was not possible, but I thought I might be able to swing a little bit here. So, knowing that their vegetation is all on a dripper system and that a few of the plants had died and that there are “empty” drippers, I asked if this would be okay. They agreed, and Father even got a patio tomato plant to put out there. I think I get my gardening “gene” from him. He has almost always had something “gardenish” growing. I guess growing up on a farm just doesn’t get out of your blood! What is that saying, “you can take the man out of the garden, but you can’t take the garden out of the man” or something like that. When they moved here, they had the entire yard done so that it took almost no work. However, he will plant something, still, like a small tomato next to a tree. So when I suggested planting so things he thought that was great.

I didn’t want to try things like peas, beans, cauliflower or broccoli, but some other things that would be easier. I went with watermelon, zucchini and butternut squash, along with the tomato he had planted and I also got a grape tomato. I planted the watermelon seeds and zucchini in march (you can do that in the middle of the dessert!) and just waited for them to come up and grow. By April 24th this is what they looked like:

**Watermelon**
watermelon

**Zucchini**
zucchini

Now, I don’t know if you can tell, but I am actually closer to the watermelon! It is in a raised bed, a foot or so closer to the camera. Okay, so I have never grown zucchini before. For all you LDS people reading this, zucchini has a bad rap. People tend to grow too many plants and then try to “gift” the zucchini to others just to get rid if it all! We all know that zucchini is really only good for making zucchini bread, right? Well, you can only make so much of that! Actually, it is okay fried or in stir fry, too, but again, you can only eat so much of that too! So to be on the safe side I only saved one of the three plants that grew!

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