The benefits of backyard gardening all personified in one cereal bowl

No, I’m not being a blog slacker by posting for today’s entry a photo of my breakfast cereal.

I have plenty of good recipes yet to share with you. Even as recently as last night I was preparing from garden-fresh ingredients an amazing recipe—a concoction I can’t wait to feature in this spot.

But nothing communicates the joy of gardening as much as does this gorgeous assemblage shown in the photo at left. Two fresh just-from-the-tree peaches and two plump blackberries, straight in from the vine, symbolize the greatest aspect of walking right out my patio door and instantly bringing breakfast indoors. Absolutely nothing like it!

All the way home from our trip out West, Hubby and I speculated about what would be ready to pick after we had been away for a period of time. Would the birds already have had a feast with our peaches and left none for us to enjoy this year? Would the tomatoes already be beyond the pale? Would we be arriving too late and thus miss out on some goodies that peaked while we were away? We didn’t even discuss our new blackberry and blueberry vines that we had planted brand-new this year, because we figured we were at least a year away from enjoying any of their yield.

Yet even in under the cover of darkness that overlay our garden as we prowled around during our evening arrival we could see spots of blushing pink literally covering our closest and best peach tree. Picking a couple revealed a healthy crop that, if we got busy and hustled, hadn’t been discovered by birds yet. We brought in a handful of peaches and promised to bring in the rest on the morrow.

But wait! What was that on the blackberry vines on which we expected nothing? Several plump blackberries almost the size of walnuts already had burst forth—and we hadn’t thought this was their year. Wahoo! So the next morning—the cereal bowl shown above. Peaches and black-berries over my shredded wheat cereal with skim milk poured all around—I was like a proud parent. I savored that freshness all the way to the last cereal bite.

The experience was satisfaction personified—the perks that await those who wait . . . and those who garden. Count me as one happy newfangled gardener!