By Bill Smith

The Daily Iberian

Hilius Verret always seems to get in a pickle about 65 days after he begins to visit “Peace in the Valley.”

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The 74-year-old Jeanerette resident tills the earth at his family garden by that name located on Admiral Doyle Drive near Jeanerette. Verret grows many different vegetables and fruits in his garden and counts on his wife, Regina, to prepare the fruits of his labor in the way that would make any chef envious.

Verret loves the work and does not mind working hard. He has even given others the opportunity to enjoy the long-honored tradition of working a garden.

“One day, I had seven different vegetables on my plate,” Verret said. “And all were grown in my garden.”

He said he grows tomatoes, pumpkins, cabbage, sweet potatoes, beets and carrots. But, one item is his favorite and he grows it from a seed.

“I like to grow cucumbers and have a couple of different types here,” he said. “These yellow ones are lemon cucumbers and they taste a little sweeter than the green ones.”

The Verrets have four children, 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and have always worked a garden for much of the produce they consume.

Regina Verret was working on a friend’s recipe for bread and butter pickles, using the cucumbers her husband raised in their garden.

“We always have so much, I would rather give it away for someone else to enjoy than sell it at the Farmers Market,” Regina Verret said.

The Web site, gardenparade.com, indicates that cucumbers are members of the gourd family, cucurbitaceae. Often considered a vegetable, the cucumber is technically a fruit. It grows on creeping vines that root in the ground or up trellises or whatever it can grab on to.

The Verret garden has some of the Pepino lemon cucumbers traveling up an old tree on the property. The plant has large leaves, which form little canopies over the cool cucumbers.

Cucumbers also have other properties which lead to different uses, such as a hair wash or a natural toner for the eyes. Cucumber slices placed over the tired eyes works wonders, according to allnaturalbeauty.us Web site.

For Hilius Verret, however, the rewards he reaps from the peaceful solitude in his garden and the food items he produces more than makes up for his daily routine of a four-mile trip from his home in Jeanerette out to the Peace in the Valley garden in the country.

“There is nothing else like it. I love it out here,” Verret said.