by Cynthia Lapena

Created on: May 27, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

My mother had an amazing green thumb, so when I finally had my own little patch of a front yard, I thought I might try gardening with my son. Who knew? One of us might just have inherited her touch. We bought several packets of flower seeds guaranteed to fill our garden with color. We followed the instructions on the packets and waited the recommended number of days. No little plants came up and, consequently, no flowers. After buying and planting several more packets of flower seeds that never sprouted, we decided to switch to something more practical, like herbs, which I could use in cooking. At last! One basil sprouted and we watched over it like soccer parents. The leaves shriveled in less than a week. Then, we tried mint from cuttings. Success! The mint flourished and filled up our little patch and we had mint in everything-from soups to salads to jellies and iced tea. Then we got tired of them. One day, I remembered them and thought it would be nice to have some mint leaves in iced tea, but we couldn't find the mint plants. They had been overgrown by weeds. We decided it was time to try something else, so we tried vegetables. We tried carrots. They dried up into tiny brown moldy lumps. We tried tomatoes. The tiny plants were swarmed with aphids. Ready to give up, we threw out some mature beans on the ground. Unbelievably, a hardy bean sprouted and eventually bore pods. We zealously watched the plant everyday, providing a sturdy trellis for the single bean plant to hang on. After several days, there were pods that looked fat enough to harvest. We used the beans in them to embellish a nice chicken stew for dinner. My son ate every single bean from our harvest with pride-all five of them. Our garden now has a healthy crop of wild flowering plants.

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