Simpler Living
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate.com

"Are you going to eat that?" asked my 7-year-old son, casting a surreptitious glance at the stash held lightly in my palm.

"I was thinking about it," I replied teasingly.

"Hand them over," he said grinning and motioning with his outstretched hand. "Please? They're mine. I planted them."

In that moment, the last few months of back-breaking weeding, heavy slogging and endless worrying came to fruition: my son and I were arguing over who would eat the last of the grape tomatoes from the day's early-morning harvest.

And they were worth fighting over -- fresh-picked from the vine and still warm from the sun, each little fruit exploded with rich flavour, firm texture and a juiciness completely foreign to store-bought varieties.

I wasn't sure if such a moment would ever come.

Everything's coming up weeds
When I first wrote about my gardening plans for our new homestead in eastern Ontario, I was full of possibilities. The days were still short, the snow was still thick and my vegetable garden existed only on paper.

And then reality hit. Despite spending the winter with my nose in books and seed catalogues, my tomato seedlings -- all 72 of them -- still failed. My zucchini, cucumber and nasturtium seedlings were feeble and my marigolds met the same fate as my tomatoes. My lettuce didn't even germinate, and my green onions never made it out of the seed packet.

Then, in early spring, I got busy with writing work, and by the time I got the garden patch fenced with split cedar rails from our back 40 (the deer around these parts can be pretty crafty when motivated) and tilled, it was too late for any cold-weather crops.

Instead of the perfectly tilled, composted and mulched half-acre of my dreams, I was left with a rough patch of ground that was quickly coming up weeds (despite all my elbow grease and cursing), some sad looking transplants whose very existence seemed to teeter on the brink of disaster and a shaky confidence as to what exactly I was doing.

I've read that gardening gets easier as it goes along: as your skill and knowledge increases, the soil itself becomes more fertile, easier to work and freer of weeds.

"One of the greatest ironies of gardening is that it is the beginner, with the fewest gardening skills, who also must cope with the worst gardening conditions," writes Jennifer Bennett in "The Harrowsmith Northern Gardener." "The gardener and the garden grow together."

But by mid-spring, weeds were the only plants successfully growing. There seemed so much still to learn about soil conditions, plant spacing, companion planting and organic pest control, and with each passing day, I got more discouraged.

Gardening is an adventure
But the stubborn Scot in me kicked into gear, and by May, I'd replaced my failed tomato seedlings with dozens of locally grown heirloom plants with wonderful names such as Thai Pink Egg, Silvery Fir Tree, Snow White and Black Ruffle. I still had my beet, carrot, pumpkin and bean seeds in waiting and some fancy potatoes -- Russian blue (how could my kids possibly resist purple potatoes?), Fingerling and Banana -- that were looking for a hill to call home.