Andy replies:

Well, if I add up the money I spent for seed, fertilizer, my
roto-tiller,
assorted containers .... I'd be much better off just buying the stuff
from Walmart grocery.

However, I am looking out my bedroom window and I see neat
rows of lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber vines, cantalop vines,
some otherkinda vines, in a freshly weeded and plowed plot....
...... hell, I don't even want to pick anything cause it will spoil the
symmetry... My vegetable garden in like some people's flower
gardens, except that , if I want to , I can eat the stuf....... I have
growing at least 10 times what I can use, but it costs about the
same for seed, so it's no big deal.......
There are intangibles involved that I can't peg to a price....
..... sort of like buying a painting that you like, and just want
to look at......

And when I get tired of it, someday, I'll just throw out
20 bucks worth of Bermida grass seed and the next year
I'll have a nice yard again.......

Oh.... I forgot labor...... Well, I spend as much time in the
garden now as I spent in the health club every day for 20 years
before I retired. But I no longer have health club dues, stinky
people around me, or a wall of posted regulations to obey....

I guess if I take the money I used to spend on health club dues
and use it to pay for my garden, I come out about even.....
...... that's not such a bad deal, after all...

Andy in eureka, Texas