A growing passion – by Kandy Shepherd

Any one else get a kick from growing your own fruit and vegetables? In the Meryl Streep movie It’s Complicated. I lusted for her character’s perfect French style potager vegetable garden (even more than I wanted her beautiful Santa Barbara house and amazing bakery).

My own veggie plot (that's it below the dream one) is a lot

more humble—but plans for an It’s Complicated garden are engraved on the “one day when I have more time” list.

In the meantime we get an ample supply of tomatoes, peas, beans, eggplant, zucchini (and zucchini and zucchini), sweetcorn and herbs, even though they are grown in a more haphazard—and dare I say less complicated—fashion than the movie one. Lettuce is something I haven’t been so lucky with this year.

When someone (and I’m glaring here at my daughter) let her horse Toby into the garden he made a beeline for the lettuces. Lucky I adore him and can’t stay cranky for long… Oh, and he does help with the fertilizer!

I was fortunate to inherit with the garden marvelous old fruit trees: apples, pears, sour cherries, peaches and an ancient gnarled plum. But it’s a battle between us and the birds to join in the harvest! I’m prepared to share, why can’t they?

My interests tend to sneak into the books I write. Food and animals are very much part of LOVE IS A FOUR-LEGGED WORD and HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS. The book I am working on now also has heroine who likes to cook, and that dream vegetable garden has somehow found its way into the plot. Funny, that…

Do you have a green thumb—or the other kind? Please leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy of HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS and include your email address if you want to be in the draw.