Did you know that I have a vegie patch here at Strathalan? Yes, I do, and I grow all sorts of nice tasty backyard vegetables. I keep the location hidden because  you just do not know who may came come along and just happen to '"pinch" a vegie or 2 or 3 …or more when you are not looking! But I picked a nice spot for a vegie plot (I sound a bit like a Teddy poet I think with my rhyming!) where it gets sunshine and shade too. I would offer to share all my produce with you, but in fact I have a VERY important job, even if I do say so myself. I am the "Official Vegetable Supplier" to the " Bear's Beautiful Brilliant Tenderly Tending to Teddy Bears Care Home"! What an extreme honour to hold that position!! I stand extra tall and straight up on my teddy bear tippy-toes when I think of my official title as the official vegetable supplier! Have you heard about this wonderful Bear Care Home? It is such a delightful Bear Home for bears to live in! Many aged bears live there, whom just need a bit of extra care because their lovely fur may have become a bit "weary" or "tatty or "worn" due to being a bit loved too much by their previous owner friends or they may be missing an eye or they have been hugged a bit too energetically over the years by their owners and they are now in the need of a little bit more teddy help in a specialised teddy care home. And then there are the very young bears whose owners have sadly ignored them, and so they have joyfully been accepted to come into this Home. Yes, there is a wide variety of ages and colours and nationalities of bears in this Home and it is such a happy place to live in with singing and music and eating and …… oops I must stop telling you about the Home because I would like to tell you more about it another time!

Anyway, back to my vegie garden and my job! Yes, I supply all the vegetables for the Bear Care Home. It is indeed very important for all teddies to eat up their vegetables and get their daily requirements of vitamins and minerals. I do hope that you know that the Vitamin B group of vitamins was originally named after B for bears, to say how important it was for young and older bears to get these nutrients! So when you eat some vitamin B filled foods please think of myself and my teddy friends, won't you?! 

And the Home requires only the best quality vegies that could ever be picked, so I am quite often out  at my vegie plot early in the morning or in the early evenings whistling a happy bear tune as I pick the vegies and pop them into my "trusty" and well-used ice-cream containers. Washed out ice-cream containers are just so very handy to put things into! Young humans need to eat up their bread crusts and vegetables so as they have curly hair…well young and older teddies need to eat up the same things so as to keep their teddy fur fluffy and soft! And of course, all teddies eat up their carrots so as they see in the dark!

       I even have an official teddy gardening outfit I put on! Well, other employees /workers in different industries and jobs have their uniforms and school students have their uniforms…so likewise I clothe myself in a teddy gardening uniform too! I always jump into a pair of red overalls, put some big yellow gumboots on my feet, put on green gardening gloves, and plop a big floppy hat which has dangling corks onto my head, which serves a few purposes. It shades my little teddy head from the sunshine so that I don't get sun stroke , the corks stop any invasions from unwanted flies or little insects or mozzies, or it stops my head from getting a bit soggy if it rains! (I do have a bright multi-coloured umbrella though in case the weather is too rainy though!) And very importantly I apply very liberally to my fur skin, teddy bear sunscreen. It is a specially formulated sunscreen made just for teddies as our fur has very special requirements from being sun burnt. So... I really do "slip, sop, slap" as the saying goes!

    One of my favourite vegies to grow are tomatoes. Hmm…if you want to get a good teddy bear conversation/debate started, just ask teddies whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable! I still am unsure on their status, so I just give them a double-barreled "fruit-vegetable" title! Mmm…it is so nice to pick tomatoes and have their scent remain on my paws for a long time after. And the tomatoes themselves smell so pleasantly garden-y, and what a tasty taste!  Zucchinis are another vegie favourite of mine. But…they grow so quickly just overnight!! One day they are smallish and thin, then the next day when I skip up to my vegie plot to have a little peek at them, they have grown into HUGE marrow-size zucchinis! These zucchinis can be used at the Bear Care Home to make enormous batches of either zucchini soup or zucchini quiches or baked zucchini slices for their roast dinners!! Digging up carrots is such fun to do too! I always sing a little song to myself as I get out and use my teddy-sized trowel.  I sing: "Dig, dig , jig, jig!!" and give a little dance and a twirl around! Oh, I forgot to say that I always bring my music player with me when I do some gardening. I read in the bestseller book:"Glenda the Gardener bear's Guide to Great Gardening", that playing music to plants helps them to grow and taste better. I am not sure if that is true, but I will just use that as an excuse to play some happy toe-tapping music whilst I enjoy my gardening tasks!

I also produce green beans and lettuce and broccoli at certain times of the year. There has been many a time that I have helped out a male teddy friend of mine who is visiting his sweet garden-liking female teddy girlfriend and does not have any flowers to take with him to give to her. They always know that they can stop in at the Kiosk on the way to their "date" and I will pick some broccoli "florets" for them to give to their girlfriend, and from what I can hear, these florets are always very well received!

I used to be a little concerned about the birds who would like to have a little "peck" at my ripe ready red tomatoes, but I came up with a solution. I just made friends with them! It is such fun chatting away to the sparrows and other birds that visit my plot!! They chirp happily, I talk happily, and I have a few tomato plants that they know that I reserve totally for them to enjoy eating from. It is a good arrangement!

After a time of gardening, I become a very tired little teddy, and am very ready to "hop, skip and jump" back to the Kiosk and have a good relaxing nap or if it is nighttime I go to overnight sleep. BUT…there was that day when I had done a HUGE amount of gardening and I was a little bit achey and sore, and I "collapsed" into my favourite comfy seat in the Kiosk as soon as I made it into the door and instantly fell off to sleep…only to be abruptly awakened by the sound of a key rattling in the Kiosk door! The Mynards had arrived!! Oh, no!!! I had slept in!! I quickly asked myself: "Do I look presentable enough? " then rushed to the sink to clean any dirt from my paws, and threw off my gardening uniform, …overalls, gloves, gumboots, hat , it really was a flurry of coloured clothing items being flung into a hidden corner! And I was huffing and puffing as I was doing this! Fortunately, I had a few minutes to do this in, because it took the Mynards a little time to transport the groceries they had bought to re-stock the Kiosk to be transferred from their car to the Kiosk. But I didn't know if I was going to get back into the position where they left me the last time they were there, before they entered the Kiosk for the morning. It was a big rush, and totally exhausting and my teddy Blood Pressure was "sky high" and my little teddy heartbeats were going "bumpety-bump, thumpety-thump" very loudly…but I made it in time!! And I could then try to calm myself down, and delight in listening to all the conversations that took place that morning and seeing all the lovely people who came into the Kiosk that day.

Well, now you know about my important gardening duties. And now I think that I will forget about my own home-grown vegies and take off the shelf a very nice packet of Continental cup-o-soup Cream of vegetable soup packet to make up and drink. And to accompany that I will slice up some tomatoes and put these slices on some SAO, or Country Cheese, or Ryvita or Cruskits dry biscuits for a tasty snack. Hmm…perhaps I could add some cheese from the Kiosk fridge and of course I must butter the biscuits first, so I'll grab a block of butter whilst getting the cheese.

 

Until next time,

                       Happy gardening and don't forget to eat up your vegies!! Your gardening friend, Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                       Also simply known as "Ted"!!