DOORYARD GARDEN: Tim & Jennifer's Calendar From Planting to Harvesting

Tim and Jennifer have a good deal of adult help and encouragement in launching their large organic vegetable garden and any children wanting to duplicate their work would need the same. However, this is less a junior how-to than a journal of the gardening year -- from the first excitement of poring over seed catalogs and mapping the plot, to planting, harvesting the bean and potato crops, and, unplanned but most surprising, catching a young skunk in the live trap that was set for a corn-stealing raccoon. In the course of their work, Tim and Jennifer do learn something about soil, composting, the parts of vegetables and even the growth of the chicks and rabbits their parents raise for meat, but most of all they have a great deal of fun -- and the photographs of just-ripe homegrown spinach and tomatoes, of garden birds and farmyard fowl, and of the childrens' shared labor make us sorry that anyone's gardening experience should have to be limited to watching Tim and Jennifer -- even though their project is carried through with style.