This is the story of a regular mom who decides to start growing her own food on her quarter-acre of land for environmental and health reasons, as well as for a challenge. As the title implies, her husband insisted on keeping the patio; she won the battle over the lawn though, and soon she is growing edible crops in beds that used to make up her front yard. Her goal: To have 75% of her diet come from her own farming efforts for one year.

Each chapter focuses on a different topic that she learned about during her experiment, like weeds, watering, what to do with an overabundance of zucchini, etc.

Perhaps you noticed the lovely cover art for this book, with green foliage and snails crawling around. Yeah, chick actually ate homegrown escargot. And that is one story I will not soon be forgetting.

This was just an enjoyable read, like sitting down with a down-to-earth, sometimes lazy or absent-minded, local gardener who tells great stories and makes you laugh. Best of all, her plot is located within a 30-minute drive of my own house, so I found many of her plights very relatable and much of advice helpful for my own gardening endeavors. I loved this one!