While Toot is away, Puddle decides to plant a vegetable garden. He enlists Opal’s help and together they plant tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers—all the right ingredients for a salad. They gather supplies in a big wheelbarrow, they measure out their garden and dig out rows. They rake the soil, add fertilizer, and plant seeds all afternoon. Then impatient Opal learns all the important lessons of growing a garden: she learns that plants need to be watered; that gardens need to be weeded; that sometimes troublesome squirrels need to be given nuts to keep them away from the seeds. And the most important lesson of all—she learns that gardens don’t grow overnight. All good things need to be cared for, protected, and given time to grow.

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