The greening of my thumb

When I was a kid, my parents tended a bountiful vegetable garden, but I didn't want any part of it. I felt then that I was too good to bend over, toil in the dirt and lower myself to humble farming endeavors. As a result, I deliberately ignored anything that had to do with gardening, from its basic tools to its earthly environment. Later, as I was well into my thirties, I remember growing tomatoes in our suburban New York home with pretty good success, but this was only part-time dedication. From that point forward, we moved to Utah, a dry state in more ways than one, and gardening became a distant memory. After owning two stunning contemporary homes in Park City, we finally settled on a small, plain abode for which we literally fell in love. Over the past six years, we've put a lot of personal work into our latest residence and among other things, have developed a wonderful garden that gets better season after season. For over a year, we've also resumed our veggie garden and while I had to learn everything from scratch, having ignored the mentoring my parents would have gladly passed on to me, this year's crop has provided most of the green we've eaten this so far this summer. At this point, gardening has become one of our top pastimes, along with running, skiing, hiking and mountain biking. Call it a definite form of “greening...”