As a preteen, one of my summertime chores was gardening. The neighbors and my parents — bullwhip-wielding Simon Legree and his equally-capable 
understudy Cruella DeVil — planted at least half an acre of vegetables in the field behind our house. Like unsuspecting migrant farm workers, my brothers and I were drafted int
o service maintaining the crops.
Grumble. Grumble. Can’t you just hear our exaggerated whines? Weeding, harvesting, watering — we did it all (begrudgingly and mostly while whining).
Though the depiction seemed apt at the time, painting my parents as Legree and DeVil was hardly fair. My brothers and I enjoyed delicious meals from the bountiful harvest; our exalted sense of entitlement should never have been a justification to exempt us from the labor required to produce that food. I guess that’s a pretty good indication of how spoiled we were, huh? Continue reading “How Does My Garden Grow?”