The Garden was Eden wasn’t a vegetable garden I guarantee.  Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had to worry about getting into trouble.  They’d have been too tired.  Nakedness would have been a non-issue.  Instead of temptation both would have gotten to hoe, weed, till, spray, water, plow, pick, and  tend.  After doing all that in a day you tell me if them knowing they were naked would have made any difference.  They would have sunburned, aching backs.  Old Satan, or “S money” as they called him back then, could have whispered to Eve all night and the answer would have always been “would you rub my back please S money? The garden of Eden had to be a flower garden with mature fruit trees planted around.  That’s all I can come up with.  With Adam and Eve laying around a flower garden all day eating fruit it’s no wonder they got into trouble.  They needed a garden like the one my family used to have.  Then needed a Garden of Newt to keep them busy.  It was huge back then.  Big enough support the vegetable and melon needs of three families.  It was a lot of work.  The garden I’ve been doing for the last four years doesn’t pay sufficient homage to the magnificent historical gardens of Newt, but it does make an attempt.
The traditional garden of Newt when I was growing up utilized the entire allotment of land allocated for gardening.  It stretched fence to fence with rows of corn, beans, watermelon, peppers, onions, tomatoes— I could go on and on but I’ll stop here.  You get the picture.  This garden was carefully laid out and attended to constantly during the growing season.  Early in the spring my dad prepared the soil for planting.  He had an old fashioned steel wheeled plow.  I think it was meant to be pulled by a horse even though it was small, but the days of having that kind of work horse around had long passed.  When me and my brother got old enough to do real work in the garden Dad hitched us up to the little steel wheeled plow.  He took a lariat rope and harnessed us to it.  We pulled and he guided.  It worked pretty well.  We only did that a couple of years.  The other way of laying rows was much easier. We would just take a hoe and walk along pulling it through the dirt by hand.  It made a nice row and you could have as many people as you had hoes working at a time.  I never asked him why he had me and my brother pull that plow.  It’s a great memory and I bet it made us stronger.  I don’t know if he thought it really was good idea to try or if he wanted to work me and my brother hard.  I remember seeing a grin across his face when I would look back as I struggled against the weight.  If I can find the thing, I may hook my kid up to it next year.  When we got the rows laid the planting started.  It looked good.  Straight lines with equal distances between each one made for a pleasing site.  The work was just beginning.  The tending to the garden was the most time consuming thing.
I can remember my grandfather sitting on the porch in his wooden chair.  He’d have his hoe leaning there gleaming in the sun.  He’d sharpen that thing until the wind off of it would cut a weed.  He sharpened it everyday after using it.  He also had a single shot twenty two rifle leaned next to him.  If some varmit came into his garden it paid the ultimate price.  He shot and his dog “Cracker Jack” would fetch whatever he hit, and he hit most every time.   He and my grandmother would get up before daylight and have breakfast.  My grandfather would be hoeing in the garden at the first twinkle of sunlight.  My grandmother would be doing any number of garden tasks.  She would hoe, weed and pick in the garden until it was putting up time.  Then she would be in the kitchen with all kinds of pots and bowls preparing to cook, clean, cut, boil or whatever was necessary to the process that day.  She was a whirlwind of activity.  We all worked hard hoeing and picking and were rewarded with vegetables aplenty.  Enough to last through the winter and beyond if need be.  The Garden of Newt was immaculate.  There were no weeds or grass.   The work started before daylight and went on until things were done.  The garden I do isn’t quite of the same caliber.   I do not get up before the sun rises and work in the garden.  I will get up that early to go fishing, but never to garden.  I don’t shoot anything that comes into the garden.  I take a lasse faire approach to garden security.  My dog will only fetch stuff I don’t want him to.  I sharpened the hoe and it cuts worse now.  I think I sharpened the wrong side.  Neither my wife nor my mother are whirlwinds of activity.  Nonetheless the garden gets done.  It gets a little weedy sometimes.  It gets a lot weedy sometimes.  It gets so weedy sometimes I can’t tell it’s a garden.  It gets done though.  We are getting better.  We would have certainly starved last year if all  we had to eat over the winter was the stuff out of our garden but we did get enough stuff grown, picked and put up to last a week or so.  That’s a start.  This year I have vowed to do better.  We may never have another Garden of Newt of historical proportions.  We will  have one this year that will keep us alive for two weeks if it comes to that.  That’s a whole week longer to live.  That’s a start.