Bringing life to their yard, the Sommers’s family has many colorful flowers in their flower bed near the front door. Photo by: Katie Sommers

By Katie Sommers

Nature is ready to bring the outdoors to life, as the snow has melted and the warm weather has moved in.

The ground is defrosting, the grass is getting greener, the tree buds are preparing to bloom, and gardeners and florists are ready to start planting. People who do not have farms and fields take advantage of nature and the land they have. Carrots, potatoes, watermelons, cucumbers, and green beans are some simple and common vegetables that people grow. Countless people also plant flower gardens in their yards to add color.

Spanish teacher, Señora Constancia Wendt, has flower beds, a vegetable garden, and fruit berry bushes. “I love flowers, so I always begin a garden with a foundation of perennials, which are flowers that come back every year. I fill in the empty spaces with annuals, which provide color all summer long and well into the fall,” Señora Wendt said. She starts her garden in May, but for her vegetable garden she starts them indoors earlier. During the summer, “my vegetable garden gets pretty weedy because it’s a lot of work for one person. The flower garden I weed early in the spring and keep it maintained,” Señora Wendt said. Weeds are not the only things to maintain in the gardens; Wendt has beetles and a weed called horse nettles that are pests.

Freshman Elizabeth Gallardo has a garden in her backyard which she will start in the last week of April. “We garden watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers, and jalapenos.” Her family gardens because its nice to see how nature works and have fresh food to eat. “To keep our garden organized [we] have some little fences around our different kind of food. We pull the weeds by hand to make sure the garden doesn’t get too messy,” Gallardo said. Sometimes the deer give her family problems with the garden.

Starting their garden in the early spring, the Sommers’s family prepares their garden for the rough summer on a bright sunny day. Photo by: Katie Sommers

Having a garden to make salads and use them for snacks, is one of the reasons why freshman Kiara Meadors gardens corn, radishes, sunflowers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots. Meadors garden is at her, “mamaw’s house and our garden is pretty big. It’s down by the river, but not too close in case of flooding.” During the summer nature takes over and weeds come into the picture. Her  family pulls weeds by hand as well as using  a machine to weed the outside of the garden. Dealing with many pests, Meadors has, “deer [that] eat the tops of our sunflowers and jump into our gates before. Then we have rabbits that dig out the carrots.”

“Home grown [foods] are so much better than store bought and you get huge pumpkins too,” junior Deborah Anders said. Anders has a fenced in 20 by 20 square foot garden in her backyard. “We have our own vegetable garden where we grow corn, pumpkins, squash and others thing as well as flowers throughout our property.” Her family starts the garden in mid-April and has a garden so they do not have to purchase as much vegetables at the store. Living by a pond and near the woods, Anders has geese and rabbits that  sometimes get into her garden.

Planting a variety of vegetables, freshman Nicole Pyatskowit has a garden at her stepmother’s house. “We try not to buy stuff we can grow,” Pyatskowit said. Her garden is in her backyard and grows pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, lettuce, roses, Japanese cabbage, and zucchini. Like various gardens have, weeds are the main problem. “If there were weeds [in her garden] then all of our plants wouldn’t grow,” Pyatskowit said.

As the month of April is pushing on, the weather seems to be getting warmer and ready to start producing flower and tree buds.