Tag Archives: garden

Strip: This is Summer Plotting (Part 2)

This is Pi Day #013.b

What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?
Pumpkin pi, of course.

Here on the great Canadian prairies, our berries grow high up in the trees. If you’ve never tried a saskatoon berry, come to my house — I’ve got about three liters of the little buggers in the fridge even as I write this. They are tart and sweet and juicy and delicious and they turn your fingers a deep purple when you pluck them from the trees.

We planted a saskatoon tree five years ago and each year our harvest gets a little bigger — even though not all of them make it into the house. Does it bother me? No… if the kid wants to stuff herself purple with backyard fruit all I can say is that it sure beats whatever else she might decide to eat the rest of the year.

Well… so long as I get enough to make a pie or two…

Strip: This is Summer Plotting (Part 1)

This is Pi Day #013.a

Lettuce turnip the beet. It’s garden party time!

The first thing we “built” in our backyard upon moving into the house was a vegetable garden. I grew six potato plants and a small bunch of chives.

I could get all groovie-hippie-earth-dad here, but the reality is that I just like reminding myself that we wouldn’t completely starve if the food distribution network collapsed: we’d have at least a week’s worth of salad and enough berries to bake a pie or two… over the burning remains of society.

Gah!

I also didn’t want to have one of those kids who says matter-o-factly that food comes from “the grocery store” when asked. I knew kids like that when I was a scout leader in a big city: Milk comes from a jug. Meat comes from a freezer. Veggies are in aisle one right by the door.

No, The Girl will get her hands dirty, even just a little bit.

And hopefully in the process her dad will learn to grow something besides a heckuva lotta weeds.