Summer Veggies: It's an Inspired Taste

Planting a garden has been a staple of my summer since I was a very little girl.  My mom has an album full of faded photos of my brother and I waddling along in diapers after her and dad, planting row after row of good things to eat on a summer evening.  We loved the planting; we loved the harvesting; we hated the weeding.  Planting happened in late spring when the work was still hard, but the weather was fine.  Harvesting happened at the end of summer just before school started and the evenings were cooler again.  But, weeding?  Weeding happened in the full heat of July and August and it was as miserable as you can imagine.

I remember as a tween, getting wake-up calls from my mom encouraging us to get outside and get the garden weeded before the day became too hot.  But, you know, we were tweens and it was summer and sleep suddenly seemed the all-important thing.  So, we weeded under the noon sun, plodding along rows of baked earth, dust clumping under our sweaty fingernails.  The water rolled down our foreheads, hanging off the tips of our noses, tickling, but we held off scratching with those now dirty nails until we just couldn't take it anymore.  If you thought this was going to be a post about how I learned to love gardening, I'm sorry to disappoint.

As an adult I lived in apartment buildings or the occasional house with plenty of sunshine and room for potted gardens, but no time or desire to grow anything.  I was working and going to school and I frequently moved.  I didn't really renew my interest in gardening until my own children came along.  

As much as I haven't really painted them as fond memories, looking back, those hours in the garden with my family, whether as the toddler pulling fresh peas out of the bucket to crunch on faster than my mom could pick them, or as the tween who gave up on weeding one fine summer afternoon and threw rotten tomatoes at her brother for an hour instead, those are some the happiest times of my life.  And I wanted to share that with my little ones.

So, we garden.  And I don't love the act itself; I've made my peace with the fact that  I do love the time spent outdoors with my children and Mr. Bleu, and I do love seeing in a very real and literal sense, the fruits of my labor.  Unfortunately, this year, we just didn't get much out in time to beat the summer heat.  Aside from some tomatoes, potatoes, and strawberries that returned of their own accord, and a few onions, we were so busy with home renovations that the garden didn't make the list of priorities.  

I'm sad in a way because this is likely the last year we will have both our daughters at home and dearly wanted one last time to hear them grumbling up and down each row as they carelessly flung seeds to the ground and then gave a disdainful shove to the dirt to cover the planting.  Ah, the memories we have made.

At least if I can't have a garden this year, I can still wear my vegetables.  I found this veggie print It's an Inspired Taste ModCloth dress on Mercari for a very good price and decided to add it to my collection of vintage ModCloth.  It's one that I wanted at the time, but again and as usual I had to make a call between it and another and it didn't make the cut.  

Well, I'm glad I found it now, a mere 8 years later, and just in time for my garden-less summer.  Maybe it will tide me over and remind me of happier times until we can get our house finished and finally get back on vegetable wagon.

Outfit Info:  ModCloth's It's an Inspired Taste Veggie Print Dress (circa 2016)