🥕 Dad and His Garden

Nestled between the pages of my memory is a story that unfolds in the rich, earthy rows of my family's garden—a tale as much about growing up as it is about growing vegetables.

It’s a story rooted in dirt, but blooming with lessons that stretched far beyond the garden fence.

🌱 The Soil, the Soul, and a Little Sass

The garden wasn’t just a patch of land—it was a playground, a classroom, and sometimes a comedy show. It taught us patience, curiosity, and the occasional “don’t plant that again” moment.

This isn't just a recount of my childhood adventures among the cornstalks and potato patches. It's a homage to the wisdom, whimsy, and sometimes, the outright absurdity of farm life as seen through the eyes of a girl who learned early on that the most extraordinary adventures don't always require leaving home.

They can happen right in your backyard—one seed, one sprout, and one hilarious mishap at a time.

📦 Dad’s Garden Experiments (aka The Great Kohlrabi Mystery)

Every spring, Dad would flip through the seed catalog like it was the Sears Wish Book. With a gleam in his eye, he’d say, “Should we try this?”—like we were planning a cross-country road trip instead of a vegetable garden.

One year he landed on Kohlrabi. None of us knew what it was. It looked like a turnip got lost in outer space.

But Dad? He was all in. So, we planted it. And wouldn’t you know it—I actually liked the stuff.

His rule was simple: you have to try everything at least once. Our garden became a rotating cast of veggie characters, each one bringing its own surprise.

🥕 When Carrots Got Chubby and Radishes Fought Dirty

Some years, the carrots came out shaped like bowling balls. One year, the radishes could’ve cleared your sinuses like a shot of wasabi. The next? Mild as milk toast.

That unpredictability didn’t scare us off. It made gardening fun. Grocery stores never offered this kind of drama.

The aisles may have been cleaner, but nothing beat that first bite of something you pulled from the ground with your own hands, still wearing a little dirt like a badge of honor.

🧺 Winter: When the Garden Moved Indoors

In winter, the garden came back to us through jars, bags, and the smell of vinegar from the pickle batches.

But potatoes—those sturdy little workhorses—deserved their own chapter. Harvesting them was a full family operation. Dad dug, we followed with the wheelbarrow, all of us laughing like we’d struck gold.

Then they went to live in the basement, tucked away in the cool dark, waiting to be peeled, mashed, or roasted into something warm and wonderful.

🥩 Meat, Potatoes, and Zero Macaroni

Dad didn’t go in for the trendy stuff. No pasta, no pizza. He was a “meat and potatoes” man through and through.

He once called macaroni “B.S.” and insisted we leave that business to the Italians. So, our meals came straight from the dirt and the barn—real food, grown and earned.

But that’s a whole other story.

💚 Lessons from the Garden

Looking back now, I see that garden for what it really was—a teacher in disguise.

It taught us how to work, how to wait, how to fail, and how to try again. It showed us what growth really looks like, in the dirt and in ourselves.

But most of all, it taught us this:
The best meals aren’t about what’s on the plate.
They’re about the stories, the laughter, and the love that went into growing them.

🌱 Wanda-ism:
"Turns out, you don’t need a passport to find adventure—just a good pair of boots, a stubborn vegetable, and a dad with a seed catalog."

Dad and His Garden