Garden Things…

I definitely was born without a “green-thumb”. Even though I have always dreamed of having my own garden — I genuinely struggle to keep something as simple as an orchid alive. But, armed with nothing but space and time… (alot of IDLE time during quarantine), I decided to take a chance and make my garden dreams a reality. In my mind, I imagined that starting a garden would be somewhat of a manageable task— I mean how hard could it be? Get some dirt, grab some seeds. Plant seeds. Water. Watch plants grow. Harvest. Repeat.

Boy was I wrong.

Gardening is hard. There’s so many things to know. Understanding the location of your garden beds, to the type of soil, even so much as determining the right soil makeup for your plants to thrive is really complex stuff. As I typically do, I threw myself into this project and read nearly every gardening book or blog that I could find. So many different techniques and ways of doing things all to reach the same end result. Being the overthinking person that I am, all of this information fueled my anxiety about it all. “Am I really ready to do this?” “What if nothing grows?” “Should I waste my money building planter boxes?”…… the questions in my head went on and on.

One night after drawing my 10th revision of a garden bed map, I threw my hands in the air. Realizing that I was stressing too much over it all, I just decided to wing it. Bring prepared going into a project is important - yes, but sometimes you just gotta throw the baby in the water and let her swim (its a saying ok - don’t get your panties in a wad— I am not throwing babies in any pools). So just like that, I decided to create this garden on my own terms, with my own timeline and if it fails…..well…..there’s always next planting season.

Because I literally cannot do anything without being “extra”, my dream garden wasn’t just any garden. It had to be a garden with a cute shed, lots of pretty planter boxes, pretty pea gravel and a little dining area where I imagined “cute little lunches” in the springtime with friends a family as we sit under perfectly strung string lights and sip on mimosas topped with Titos.

Sigh…. one can dream, right?

What I’ve ended up with is a work in progress…. a garden that will probably be my “forever project” changing scope and scale over time. I had a local carpenter build my planter boxes, I sourced dirt from a surplus supply and found my pea gravel at a local quarry that was needing to get rid of tons of gravel. I rented a steer skid and moved all the gravel and dirt (with a little help from the hubs) ourselves.

For a first time gardener who is absent of a green thumb, I think I did a good job! Our first sign of life in the garden is starting to sprout through the dirt — I’m getting excited! The best part of this entire process is that my kids are engaged and even energized by the garden— the older ones researching about what types of vegetables thrive in our region and when to plant…..and the littles, well, they are always excited to play in the dirt and gravel :-)

I’ll be sure to share more photos as this project evolves but for now - enjoy the little gallery of photos that shows how this garden has come to fruition in our backyard :-)