Sustainable solution

For Mother's Day, my son and husband gave me a bag of seed potatoes, 100 red onion sets and some asparagus. I excitedly accepted my gifts, all the while thinking in my head, "Where do they think I'm going to plant all of this?"

My little backyard garden has barely enough room for four tomato plants and a couple of yellow squash or zuchinni plants, in addition to my perennial alpine strawberries, thyme, chives and sage.

I spent couple of days pondering where to establish an asparagus bed and find room for potatoes. My husband and I looked over the bare spot left from our son's sandbox that we gave to the little girl next door last fall. He proposed building a raised box there. But we already were enjoying having enough space to maneuver around the apple tree again.

Then a possible solution occurred to me. For the past couple of summers my neighbor has been going to Kenya to visit her aging father. Would she be going again this summer? And could I use some of her raised boxes while she's away?

"Plant whatever you want," she responded, excited to have me put her gardens back in use. So now I'm growing onions and potatoes in the yard next door. Even with that, I still had potatoes and onions left to plant at my mother-in-law's.