The excitement of springtime planting and garden planning

It's spring, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing and planting time is near. We must plow our fields or churn our gardens for the seeds to come.

Every year I and my family plant all the plants we want, which for us means corn, watermelon, tomatoes (my specialty; I get it from my grandpa Bill), and always zucchini and yellow squash. The first year we made a fence out of pallets and painted them blue—that year it was like my tomatoes would take over the world!

Then the next year we planted the plants, and a few months later they were overflowing with weeds. I decided I must take up arms against them. So I picked up my shovel, my gardening gloves and a hat. It took me almost a month, but darn you would think that the weeds were never there except for when some of the plants had died and I had to rip them out of the soil.

This year I am pretty much head of the planting and gardening committee for my family. What I want to do is plant a lot of marigolds, which are natural pest repellents. Then I will make sure that there are plenty of forget-me-nots to give color and attract pollinators.

Once the veggies and plants in the garden are mature enough, there will be regularly visiting pollinators to help. Then the garden will be sure to grow with high levels of production, and I never use chemicals to keep the bugs away, to protect the pollinators.

Once I have the new veggie garden built and dug out, I will start my flower garden. I am having it set out as either two big circles inside each other or a flag kind of where they are planted on to a piece of land where it is dug out and there is no flower box or barrier.

I want to plant begonias, carnations, and of course forget-me-nots (In case you have not noticed by now, they are my favorites). Then once again I will plant another pest-control flower—echinacea! This is a multipurpose plant. It is well known as an herb, and is most commonly found in cough medicine.

Gardening is one of the things that keep me at peace. For me there is nothing better than either tending to it or just sitting there and admiring it.