Hey, @riverflows, fancy meeting you here, after so long!

I grew up in Monterey Park, California, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, and my mom always loved organic gardening and landscaping, complete with a huge and ever-changing compost pile.

I remember our large black cat, not-so-creatively named Cat-Cat, and my mother's complaints that she couldn't plant anything unless she showed it to our cat first, because if she didn't. he would dig up whatever it was, to see what it was.

If she showed it to him first, and then planted it, he would leave it completely alone.

Of course, Cat-Cat was the king of our hill, nearly forty pounds in his prime, and he not only had all the local cats cowed, but all the local dogs as well. I remember one incident when a large collie that belonged to people on the next cul-de-sac over tangled with him, and Cat-Cat beat the crap out of the collie, to the extent that my mom had to carry the collie back to its owners, and tell them apologetically that our cat beat him up.

An embarrassing situation for any self-respecting dog. ;-)

Thankfully this was before the current trend of suing everyone in sight for the slightest transgression.

But most of what I remember were our organic fruits, from our largish strawberry patch, which my mom made available to all the kids in the neighborhood; to our fruit trees, which included a Meyer lemon, which bore fruit nearly year round, a couple of nectarines and peaches, a natal plum tree, and even a macadamia nut tree, though that tree took ten years to mature, and we wound up moving across town before it ever bore nuts.

I know the next owners put in an in-ground pool, but I always hoped that they had the good sense to keep the fruit trees, especially the macadamia nut tree.

There was also the time when my eldest sister planted a watermelon seed, and from it grew the most gorgeous beefsteak tomato plant you've ever seen, just covered in fruit.

And we all adored the Globe artichokes my mom grew, especially when she made Hollandaise sauce to dip them in, which was a favorite meal for us all.

My mom's mother and grandmother, in New Mexico, were organic gardeners as well, and so my sisters and I learned from them all, and all wound up gardening organically ourselves in the long run.

Life is wonderful, especially when there's fruit to enjoy at harvest!