How does your garden grow?

A recent gardening thread on the Indiana Homeschoolers yahoo group made me think of my dad and this trellis he made out of PVC pipes (in 1986) so I had to go looking for some pictures of it.

This is not the best picture of Greg and me, but it shows the size of Dad's cucumber trellis. I'm amazed he had the patience to build this thing.  And he had it rigged up with some type of irrigation system. Dad was a plumber so that probably wasn't as hard for him as it sounds to me.  Besides, he was a pretty smart cookie.

I remember Dad talking about being able to walk inside and pick cucumbers overhead. And that gravel pad inside makes me think he and Mom may have put lawn chairs in there to enjoy their little cucumber house. Isn't that just too cute?


And here is Dad inside the trellis. This is a great picture that shows more details of the trellis's construction.  Is that elaborate or what? And you can see my handsome dad too.  :^)

While I was searching for pictures of Dad's PVC cucumber trellis, in the same box I uncovered this picture of my Grandma A (Dad's mother) working in her garden:

On the back side of this picture someone wrote, "Surely Heaven will have a few small garden spots just for people like this great lady!"

I love this picture. An elderly lady in a flowery dress with her hair braided and pinned up outside gardening (by the looks of those large squash growing in the background, I'm guessing it might have been in September sometime.) 

And just to show the nut doesn't fall too far from the tree, below is a picture of me c. 1970 hoeing my zinnia garden. I would have been about 11 years old in this picture, but I remember this like it was yesterday - growing zinnias for 4-H. I also remember that shirt I was wearing.  I can remember the feel of it.  Isn't that so weird?

I don't remember, though, that my zinnia garden was so pathetic looking. What I remember is being so proud of it. Ah well. I'm still trying to figure out how to get things to grow.

Happy Gardening!