My neighbors are pretty generous when it comes to sharing of their home grown plant foods and helping around the house with handy work, if needed.

I recently started growing my now snow peas, herbs and Japanese eggplant to offer back fruits of labor aside from my free figs on a large tree, which we fight the squirrels for yearly! I was aiming to travel last Spring to Europe in the hopes of assisting a friend with their English garden being built from an old mill race.

The travel plans were halted in March therefore I planted a few things in my Amerian yard as inspiration of what continued to be planted overseas in my absence. It was quite incredible what I had forgotten but remembered too, in all the years growing up in the yard with my parents who gardened together expansively, different food and floral species. 

This year I hope to be able to turn the fruits of labor into the start of a larger garden and I believe with the help of the neighbors and a few books this is an overdue project for a love of my vegetarian diet of 30 years. I enjoy learning about different types of gastronomic wonders to make my own jams, and jars of seasoned oils to cook with.

Here’s turning our lemons into lemonade this year, being closer to the walls of our homes. Maybe it can become a habit for a cleaner world and more conscientiousness with washing our hands more often, when it’s all said and done. Definitely the gates to travel will open again and life as we knew it, will bring new lemons and larger gardens of life, to tend.