To grow your food is to know your food

...I think I just quoted a Wendy's commercial.

But no matter.

It's true!

Growing your own food is such a tasty and rewarding experience. All my years growing up, I picked oranges and grapefruit from the trees out back for breakfast. I shucked sweet corn in the backyard and brought it in for dinner. I carefully guarded my strawberries from those pesky birds. And yes, all of this was in the desert of Arizona.

You see, though I grew up in AZ, my dad will always be an Iowa farm boy at heart. So of course he had to plant a garden each year, wherever he was! In fact I'm pretty sure I was the only kid in Arizona who had towering stalks of sweetcorn in my backyard. And boy, were those other kids missing out.

When I was in AZ for Creative Estates, I got to loot his garden once again. It's still early so the late spring and summer crops weren't full-grown yet, but they were working on it!



You can see that it's not very tall yet, but give it a couple weeks and everything will be exploding with growth!

Of course some things won't grow very big...



...at least not above ground. These bright green leaves are the tops of carrots! Aren't they pretty?



Of course we can't forget the corn. These little guys are only a foot or two tall now, but soon they'll be reaching up to the sky.



I think this plant might be my favorite. Yes ladies and gentlemen, those are Brussels sprouts! They grow on a big, long stalk, with huge leaves fanning out on the top. Then you just pop off the sprouts when they're big enough!



The baby spinach was coming in nicely. I snagged some of this to bring home to cook with!



The beginnings of what will become a giant bush of a tomato plant. The cage around it helps the vines have some support when the fat, juicy tomatoes try to weigh it down.

Of course, the best thing about all this home-grown goodness is that everything is so wonderfully fresh. For a huge cook and foodie like myself, just-picked-fresh produce is heaven!

This year is the first summer that I have a deck, even if it is a bit measly. They're hard to come by in Chicago so any deck at all is a great find! I can't wait to start planting my own small garden. I'm hoping to have basil and tomatoes, both which grow well in large pots. We'll probably also throw in a smaller herb garden, maybe some chives and dill? I'm holding off for another week or two for the weather to get out of this rainy/snowy/slushy/windy mess before I plant, but I'm definitely beginning to get the itch.

Summer can't come fast enough!