The Fine Art of Gardening!!! (Not Really)

     Just kidding!!! Oh my word I WISH I had the green thumb of my mother and grandmother! I simply cannot seem to keep indoor plants alive. I actually give them away in sympathy for their very lives. My dear friend just gave me three plants and another friend gave me one. So I have an Aloe Plant, a Spider plant, Mint and Wheat Grass. Which ones do you think are already dead? The Mint went first. I faithfully had kept it watered but I put them all in a row in the only place in our house that gets sunshine. I think it may have been too warm. We have had some pretty hot May days here. The Mint has black spots on the leaves!!! And isn't Mint pretty hard to kill? I even spoke kind words over them because I LOVE them so much. The Wheat Grass is also turning a very interesting color. So far the Aloe and Spider plants are okay. We have a Cactus that I have not been in charge of and it is still happy and fine.

  I grew up around gardens. When I was very tiny and all through my growing up years my grandparents had a large garden every year. They also had an apple tree and picked wild blueberries and strawberries throughout the year. When we lived on our farm my dad had an organic produce farm. I spent hours in the fields. I learned to drive a truck at an early age so I could help him with field work and I operated the store that sold the veggies. My mom also had a massive garden that I worked to water and weed. I grew up working for the food I ate.

  It was just natural that when we bought our own house we bought one that had the yard for a garden. That first year we were there we put a big garden bed in and my husband went to his family dairy farm and loaded our garden with potent poo. That year our garden was a pretty awesome success. I worked hard on it and felt so proud of all my labors. One year I planted and extra garden in my grandparents garden and tended it and my own!! I would blanch and freeze green beans. I would grate bags and bags of zucchini and make zucchini loaves galore. We had tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, potatoes. We tried growing broccoli, lettuce, spinach, potatoes and cucumber. We had peas and beans and rhubarb. As I think back I can't even recognize who that person was. How was I able to do that (the weeding, watering and harvest)?

As the years went on that person, who loved to be in the garden, slowly faded into the distance and became a shadow. I just could never get sleep. The presiding anxiety and pain and all the other things made so many things in life like that impossible. I just had to survive and the garden was way too much extra work. So each year I did less until two years ago I said no more! I just did not do a garden. I felt like it was sort of the ultimate sign that I was done with who I used to be. It was so sad and yet necessary.

Last year I did not do a garden either.

This year a garden is planted. I was not there the day it was planted as it was my birthday. There is no fertilizer in the ground. So far there are four bean plants that have come up in the entire row. There are some peas, some spinach and some zucchini. We'll see how it goes. We also have some blueberry and raspberry plants, a grape vine and some strawberries planted. I have not even considered what my year will look like with gardening. I don't know if I will do any harvesting in regards to the hours of blanching etc. I think I will just wait and see how I feel.

It is exciting though. I felt like my first two children really saw where their food came from and experienced it fresh and organic but my last two have not had that pleasure. I think it will bring them a lot of joy. So I may keep you posted. There are not cute raised beds. It is just dirt with a lot of grass growing back and little mounds or crooked rows. And it is perfect.