by Walter Abrone

Created on: February 15, 2010   Last Updated: March 10, 2010

Gardening has become a therapeutic hobby that I have grown to love more and more with each passing day. Living in California requires a different format in my gardening techniques, but it still gives back the same rewards.

I first got into gardening when I was about thirteen. This was abnormal, for one I was a male living in Texas and two I was six feet tall one of the best athletes you might ever come across. In my city gardening was a woman’s work. At thirteen my mom had lost interest in her garden, as a matter of fact I remember my older brother digging up plants and giving them to young lady’s in his school. At this age I was obsessed with worms, so I would go into her garden with her shovel and just dig away. I would catch worms and put them into Styrofoam cups with a little soil .

Oh this was so amusing to me, so a week into my new daily hobby my family and I were sitting at the dinner table. I’m poking at my beans prolonging the agony of having to make them disappear into my gut. I ask my mom “where do beans come from?”
She looks at me impatient by my bean protest “ from the same place as your little friends you have in your cups”
“eewwww” I shriek “why do I gotta eat this, it probaly got worm boo boo in them.” I say with a stale face.
She burst into laughter, then she stood up went into the cabinet rattled around in a bag  and came back over to the table and handed me a bean and said “why don’t you plant this in the garden and watch it grow.” I gave her a defeated look. I mean did my mom really want me to plant the very thing I hated most in this world, if they grew I would have to eat them.

In a child’s mind curiosity always beats out restraint, so as sure as the sun rose that next day I planted that seed before I went off to school.

Weeks passed and I had got over my worm stage and got into poking sticks into ant mounds. So one Saturday morning walking on my way to my favorite ant mound I happened to look over to my bean plant. I jumped straight into the air, to my surprise it had actually did what my mom said it would do, grow.

I ran to my mom after making this discovery.
“Mama the bean plant grew” I yelled out of breath.
“That’s good baby, I wanna see your little bean plant” she said and continued “ where is it?”
“Follow me its out front” I grabbed her hand and lead her to the bean plant

When we made it to the

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