Our family plans to do something new this year; we are planting a garden. Jeff has always wanted a garden. I like the idea of a garden. And the kids? They are along for the ride because that’s what happens when you’re a minor and aren’t old enough to have a job and car to escape your parents’ ideas.
With the exception of one or two people, everyone I have ever known has gardened at some point in their lives. Maybe they were successful, maybe not, but now that I am in my 40s, and the kids are out of diapers, I think I’m ready for this adult rite of passage. In case you’re scratching your head–yes, the kids have been out of diapers for years now. I just think that cloth diapering and gardening at the same time seems a little much to ask, and I haven’t thought about gardening much since then.
The best way to feel successful is to keep the bar at a reasonable height. I’m great at playing limbo.
Besides, if this gardening thing fails, I can reframe it into a solid blog post: 7 Ways To Fail at Gardening.
Except I don’t want it to fail. I never want to fail.
I am not a master gardener, but everyone is a noob at something. I’ve kept a camellia alive for a month now, I have a few healthy cactus plants, and there’s a healthy outcropping of white mold on the indoor frame of our 60-year-old window panes.
I can grow stuff.
We plan to start small, which is easy since our garden will not extend beyond the 11 x 9 ft. raised box that came with the house.
After Jeff and I had relocated two blackberry bushes growing in the box to a different part of our lot, Meredith did the initial heavy lifting by pulling out all the dead plants and weeding. There were other things in there–plastic toys, wrappers, a hammer; typical things one might find in a garden. Then, yesterday, when we got a break from the weeks of rain, Meredith, Kenny and I finished weeding what we started calling our “mud garden” and raked out the pine needles.
The kids were asking what we’re going to plant. I told them tomatoes. They asked what else. I said tomatoes. Clearly, I have a bit of planning ahead of me.
When Jeff and I made the decision we would homeschool our oldest kid, homeschooling wasn’t as mainstream as it is now and unlike today, finding resources proved challenging. Gardening is a completely different problem. There have always been endless choices, methods, and opinions. It’s similar to the time Jeff was in graduate school, and we took Pranaya, one of the university’s foreign exchange students, to Wal-mart. We were there for three hours, and she didn’t even buy what we took her to purchase. It was as overwhelming for her as it was amusing to us. I’m sure my ranting about noobie gardening is amusing to those who have gardened for years too. That’s okay. I don’t feel so overwhelmed that I mind. Mostly, I hope liking the idea will turn into liking the process because it would save us money at a time we need to save money and bring some healthy grub to the table.
Also? Salsa.
Enough said.