March 18 Column: Competitive Gardening

If you’ve already read my garden column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review, I do hope it gave you a good laugh. But let me reassure those of you who know me that Bill’s and my marriage is still rock-solid! If you haven’t seen my column yet, the topic is the competitive gardening that’s been taking place in the veggie garden over the last few years. Here’s a link to it: Spouses compete for precious garden space.

I’ve been married to my awesome husband, Bill, for 40 years now and have to say he is absolutely the BEST. The main garden tasks he’s been taking care of include organic pest control in our small orchard, setting up and maintaining the drip irrigation system, planting the garlic, and tending the grapes, currants and native plantings. That’s a lot of important stuff, right?

Well, apparently those chores aren’t keeping him busy enough. That’s because he’s starting to take more of an interest in the planting of the vegetable garden. Sounds innocent enough, but he wants more of “my” beds for planting certain crops that I don’t have room for. And that’s a bit much! Well, I won’t give away more of my column before you read it.

For this week’s “Everyone Can Grow A Garden” video, I take you on a virtual tour of our veggie garden so you can see what our set-up is. I’ve had requests for this plus I figure you’re going to see a lot of it throughout the gardening season, so this is a good start:

OK, back to Bill… I invited him to be a part of the video but he prefers more to be a behind-the-camera and behind-the-scenes guy. So he’s invisible now, except for the photos above — including his now-famous hands — that is! I think it would be great fun to do the videos together, though. What do you think?