The Big Garden part two

Editor's Note: This is the second edition of a two-part series.

Fast forward 35 years (to the present time) now that we are in the twilight of our lives, there are so many things we can't do. Gardens and canning are one of them. I must say I miss having a garden and all of the wonderful things that a garden produces, but we find other things now that aren't so rigorous to occupy our time. I find more time for reading, watching a classic movie, playing cards and visiting with friends, visiting people who are sick and in the hospital or nursing home and, of course, my very favorite past time, my computer and writing. And last but not least, an afternoon nap is quite inviting.

The other day I was in a grocery store doing some shopping when I encountered a friend that I hadn't seen in ages. We got to talking and he told me he had retired (he is our daughters age) and he decided to take up gardening (big time).

He then asked, "Marilyn do you still have a garden?"

To which I had to admit that no we didn't, we just weren't able to care for one.

He said, "Well, Lois and I will bring you over some things from our garden."

That evening after supper, we heard a knock on the door and, by golly, there he and Lois were with an absolutely huge box of "goodies." You could have knocked me over with a feather. The box included a huge cabbage, red potatoes, carrots, onions, yellow crook neck squash, zucchini squash and cukes. We feasted on those for several days, when they again appeared with three dozen ears of sweet corn that was so good I can't begin to tell you how good it was. They came again with two huge sacks of corn, they thought we might like to freeze some. Would we! We ended up with 20 packages of frozen corn.

Our friend Sally and husband Jim are on vacation and asked if we would mind picking their garden and said we could have whatever we picked, they just didn't want it to go to waste. We picked the other day and ended up with almost three ice cream pails of yummy tomatoes.

And that folks is how our summer has been going.