This past weekend I flew up to Sacramento to celebrate my wonderful sister-in-law and the fact that she is about to have a baby. They live about a 30 minute drive from Sacramento up I-80 (notice I didn’t call it The 80? Your welcome Joey). It is a beautiful piece of property in the country filled with oak trees and large granite rocks. Even in the summer when all of the grass does and trims brown it is still charming.

My love of growing things can be credited with my dad who would often have a vegetable garden in the summer. He tried gardens a over the yard and he grew many different things. The past few years his crop was almost nothing. I think this was partly due to the location and mostly due to gophers. He said as soon as plants started taking off it was like they got sucked underground. That must be quite frustrating! I tried to convince him to use raised beds to garden and he finally did. You can’t really tell in the picture above but he has four skinny and long raised beds. He is getting a copious amount of produce that is delicious. He agrees that raised beds are so much easier and more rewarding then when he was trying to garden in the ground. This year has been much more rewarding. I’m excited for next year when I will have raised beds again.