I just talked to my third foster dad on the phone last night, and had to give him a little guff about my time living with them.  I was 12-14 years-old while living in their house, and had already had enough childhood trauma for a lifetime. 

The J family took in foster kids; if I remember correctly, they’d had 23 children through their home before I came along.  They also had three natural children…so, it’s not a stretch to say that they loved kids!  I felt their love, and it was a new thing for me – as the only person I ever thought loved me was my paternal Gramma (don’t even remember feeling love from my own parents). 

With so many kids / people in the house, there were many mouths to feed…so, Mr. J had a garden.  I’m sure it was the the size of a football field, but he corrected me last night and said the rows were a mere 75 ft. long – and I’m sure the entire garden was a few hundred feet wide 😉 .

Because of my maternal Irish heritage, I had a love of taters.  I could (and still would) eat taters at every meal.  When Mr. J realized that, he took it into official gardening consideration when I lived with them – and made it MY job to be the one to weed the 5 rows of taters every summer.  And I’m sure the garden grew to the size of an Olympic swimming pool, each and every time I got out there and started my weeding.  The rows just went on FOREVER!!!

Oh, I hated that job.  With a passion!  Let’s just forget the fact that I have never been a morning person, so I would wait until the hottest part of the day to go out there and do my chores.   And if I waited until the evening, the skeeters would eat my tender white skin alive!   And Mr. J admitted to me on the phone, too, that his own daughter still brought up the garden chores she had to endure – she’s sure they had some lasting negative impact on her life.  Yeah, I know that feeling!

Mr. J wasn’t mean – all of the kids in the house had 5 rows, and he took the rest of the rows – wanna bet he took the EASY rows??!!!  I’m convinced of it!   And he so lovingly <ahem> reminded me, last night, that he tilled up and down the rows every week, so all we had to do was to weed in-between the plants themselves.  Right.  I’m sure I forgot that part, too.

I will not deny that I enjoyed the fruits of the labor, cause taters are my favorite!  And I never minded harvesting the garden – we’d can nearly everything, pickle the cukes, put the carrots & taters in the root cellar and shuck the popcorn until our thumbs bled.  I don’t remember disliking doing any of that part.  It was just the WEEDING – oh, the awful WEEDING!

Last week, I went into the house to find this:

Lovely, new red taters.  From our garden!  And guess what?   This lass WILL enjoy these taters … and remember Mr. J’s garden of my youth … because my hubby did it all for me!  And I didn’t have to weed a thing!