Weekend Project Two: Garden!

I used to think of myself as having a green thumb, due to one very successful plant I had in the second grade. One day a branch of our classroom plant fell off when it was being watered and Mrs. Risley selected me to be the lucky kid who got to take the branch home. With great importance, I rooted it in water, and transplanted it to soil, and it became the biggest lushest plant on our patio for the longest time. It was the only one of its type that ever flowered in our home. I am sure it was the love of a child that made that plant so happy. And I felt like a successful gardener! I want my daughter to know the magic of watching things grow. I want her to know food comes from the earth, and that even the tiniest seeds planted can turn into the most wonderful things.

I have been working on envisioning what we want in our dream life, and hoping to do what we can to make that a reality. In my dream life I am definitely a gardener. In real life, my gardening experience involves a lush veggie garden my father grew at our home in Kansas before we moved away to Florida when I was 4, then the meek little harvest of a few peas from the garden we planted when we moved to sandy acidic soil of Florida, in 4th grade I grew some teensy mangled dry sprouts from the radish seeds given out in science class for the county fair competition, and then my attempt at an herb garden with one thriving tarragon plant sticking up in my suburban lawn during high school. When in midwifery school, I did work for a while on an organic farm, and mostly seeded and thinned greens in the greenhouse. It gave me confidence I can indeed make things grow, but also made me aware of how much I do not know about soil and things like fish emulsion, and nitrogen balance. I have been looking into all this, and instead of getting too overwhelmed with how much I do not know about gardening, I decided to just start this season. Rather than await perfection, and do soil testing and make crop rotation plans and companion plant and create a virtula permaculture mini eco-system....well, you see my point....we decided to just get some plants in the ground. We will learn as we go along- we had to just make a move or the planting season was going to pass us by.

So we started with a raised bed, some sprouted plants, and a plan for a strawberry patch.

We have high hopes for our dream garden. And our dream life. We do need to get some deer fencing up pretty quick here, or these guys are going to munching on some very special salad greens at our expense.

So grow, little plants grow!!!