Jelly Roll Gaelic

There's an experiment going on in my backyard.  It's called a vegetable garden. 

When I was growing up, my farm-owning grandfather let all of his city-living kids have two or three rows in his garden to raise whatever they wanted as long as they did all the work.  Weekends were spent hoeing and pulling weeds.  The payoff was long-lived with vegetables that graced our table fresh from the stalk as well as stocked in our pantry in jars that my mama put up.

Although I helped with the garden duties, I'm not sure how much of their knowledge got osmosed.

My garden is growing.  Although it's a bit unwieldy.  Cabbage, carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, beets, onions, and corn have been harvested.  There's also a fig "tree" against my house.  It would have been a tree if it hadn't split as a young thing making it a bush instead.  A twelve foot round bush.

Today's to-do list includes making fig preserves.  Even if I didn't learn all the gardening skills I could have at my father's knee, I certainly learned all the canning skills I needed at my mother's and grandmother's apron strings.