...genetic memory.....

     Georgie and her sister Annie Laurie grew up at Cottage Hill, appropriately named at the top of the highest hill in the area, surrounded by farm land and woods, described by Annie Laurie in 1924 in "Recollections of a Canadian Childhood."  There are references to the apple orchard, tapping sap from the maple trees, watching the lambs, calves, and colts grow, day by day, planting grain in the spring.  The family truly lived off the land in the latter half of the nineteenth century.   I might add these are my British Empire loyalist relatives to which I am referring.
    And so like other political contrasts that exist in our family up to the present day, there are also the southern confederates that lived in Georgia, and earlier in South Carolina and North Carolina, who were farmers as well.  I have not found any plantation owners, but the mid nineteenth century census records do list free workers and slaves.
     So I guess I rightly should have dirt under my fingernails.  I love to go out each morning and see how much my plants have grown.
     I don't remember more than flower gardens around my home as a child.  But by the time I was a young adult with children of my own, my parents had a vegetable garden.  Tomatoes, pole beans, and sugar snap peas are what I remember best.  So at about the same time, we decided to try a garden here in Florida.  Our best crop was new potatoes. It was so much fun to dig the potatoes.  However, the overall results were poor due to our sandy soil and dogs running in the backyard.  So much for the garden.
     Until last spring.  Friends were using earth boxes.  We decided we might be successful with those.  An actual box filled with soil and a built in water reservoir.  It worked!  We had peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and cucumbers, followed by fall okra and lettuce that we ate up until two weeks ago.
     So Spring 2012 we have expanded.  We have a 3 x 8 plot and a 3 x 10 plot.  Raised beds.  Hauled in soil, surrounded by fencing to keep the dogs from running through the middle.  Maybe my veggies will help cancel out our carbon footprint.......