Au Naturel Pumpkin Patch-Pesticide Free Is Good For Me

I never had much of a green thumb growing up, I just helped my mom.  She grew big gardens and beautiful indoor plants.   Last year I finally had somewhere to grow a small garden, and I was going to give it my all.  The garden was decent, the flower beds full of gorgeous wildflowers, but the crowning glory was my pumpkin patch!

The reason it was so amazing was that I never bought pumpkin seeds, never planted a thing! The pumpkins and gourds I bought the previous year were really hardy, and I kept them around long after the holidays, not throwing them out until spring.  I had a bonfire pit in the yard so I just chucked them in the pile.  Awhile later I realized a little pumpkin patch had started to grow all on its own.  A couple weeks later I saw another small patch had started in our ditch.  We got quite a bit of spring rain that year and the pumpkins were loving it! They took off like crazy.  By the end of the season I had about 20 total.

I think people have gotten so far away from nature now that they forget the magic of it. It is absolutely amazing to me that with little effort at all, in fact just tossing out old pumpkins I could help create a whole new environment.  How many people know that sometimes it is that easy to grow?

We live in small spaces next to one another, and we don't have the space or the time or whatever it is to plant.  When you start thinking about how far people have gotten from planting and the earth and dirt and knowing the land, it gets scary.  Scavenging, gathering, and planting is how humanity made it, how could we get so far away from this?  It's clear that plants have thousands of beneficial uses, and many dangers we should be aware of.  It is only hurting society that we have gotten out of these practices.

Even more frightening many places have bans on growing your own food.  It makes you ask the question why would a place ban growing food?  Especially when big corporations tell us how we need pesticides to grow food for all the starving people. What reason is there to not grow food?  Why grow grass in the first place?  When did this shift of natural land to grass lawns happen?  What happened to victory gardens?  Why don't we care now that a basic necessity is being outlawed?

 Well this girl does! In defiance I grow as much and as often as I can.  I buy heirloom plants and support local companies.  I never use pesticides.  It is literally not only throwing your money away to greedy companies, but killing the environment and us.

 The great thing with nature is that if you take care of it, it creates wonders all the time.  Nature free of human intervention continues on, but imagine what the world could be if we nurtured it.

So plant a tree, buy a pack of heirloom flowers, and most importantly forget unjust laws and grassy lawns.  Instead grow food that benefits you and pollinators.

Our backyard is a haven for birds all year with a couple big trees providing shelter, but when I planted a garden I noticed just how busy our little haven became.  Butterflies, bees, insects, and arachnids now shared the yard with the birds and the moles.  It's one of the great joys of my life to just be outdoors somewhere and watch the wildlife.  When you stop and listen nature has great lessons to teach us all.

Sometimes nature doesn't care what you think and comes to you.  This is a wildflower bed in my yard and neighbor Dilly cat who loves to help garden.