The following was written by Writers in the Grove member, Patti Bond, as part of our month long prompt, garden.

Trees, shrubs, flowers, and vegetables, all these make up gardens. While I was growing up, we had a huge vegetable garden. My family planted cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and pumpkins.

I remember one Fall, we grew a huge pumpkin. It was mine and it was stolen. I was very upset.

I took to foot looking for it. I found it in someone’s garage.

I high-tailed it home and retrieved my little red wagon. I snuck back there and brought my pumpkin home. While I don’t recall any other major mishaps with the garden, which was probably a good thing, I remember my family focused on keeping not only the vegetable garden but other gardens we tended, too.

To name a few, we had many flower gardens, roses, petunias, and colorful daffodils. Gardens are a lot of work to maintain with all the watering, weeding, fertilizing, and pruning. Certain flowers only bloom during specific times of the year. For example, roses only bloom in summer through early fall in the Pacific Northwest. Daffodils come up in early March, or sometimes, if the weather is unseasonably warm, daffodils come up in late February, a bright surprise at the end of winter.

Gardens that are kept up nice usually means that people care about the way their house and yard looks. Today, there are also garden flags people display in their yard which look nice.

I loved picking flowers from the garden to make beautiful floral arrangements to give to family and friends, or even to enjoy on my bedside table. They bring me such happiness, what would we do without gardens?