Gardening efforts bear fruit — and more fruit ...

This spring my husband, Grit, planted 230 tomato plants based on the luck he had growing tomatoes in our very shady yard in Connecticut. Now he is hoping for an early frost — he will never be that tomato greedy again!

Being a frugal man, he is unwilling to let his garden go to waste, but after a long summer of hard work, he's come to feel that enough is enough, and a frost would give him an excuse to let it go.

He has discovered truth in the old adage, "gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it." At this point, both his enthusiasm and his back have given out.

Dwight Eisenhower once said, "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."

I think this theory was at work when Grit went to the nursery in Springville and envisioned all the possibilities for planting our new half-acre plot. (Picture visions of vegetables dancing in his head!) So, after a spring spent dreaming and digging, his garden boasts peppers in varying strengths — from the common green bell pepper to the fiery jalapeno — string beans, cucumbers, spaghetti squash and pumpkins. Oh, and crook-neck squash and zucchini planted side by side that cross-pollinated to produced a hybrid we have labeled the "True Grit." It is striped light green with a yellow interior and is shaped like an acorn squash. Makes a great stir fry, though by now we are getting a bit tired of this as well.

The garden was a former horse pasture, and the crops have exceeded his wildest dreams. Starting in late July, he spent many hours harvesting and just as many trying to give it all away. At first he was afraid the neighbors would bar the door when they saw his truck pull up, but gratefully our experience has taught us that tomatoes are much more welcome than zucchini. I have heard the latter laughingly referred to as "porch fruit" because your neighbors grow it, and having an oversupply, when they see you are away they run over and put some on your doorstep.

At first, Grit was happy to be over there puttering and picking, but as the plants grew larger and more productive, he was only too happy to have the grandchildren come help. Four-year-old Cooper deserves a gold medal for his excellent cherry tomato picking.