Monday, June 8, 2009

A Garden in the Ground

Two summers ago the hubby and I moved out of our one bedroom apartment building apartment into the ground floor of a duplex. I could list many reasons why this was a step in the right direction, but for the purposes of this post, I only need mention that I had a back porch big enough to put some pots on in an attempt to have a "patio garden." I planted a variety of herbs, tomatoes, and a cucumber plant. The herbs mostly flourished both seasons. The tomatoes did okay (except for the cherry tomato, which was insanely productive). My cucumber plant, after a beautiful start with lots of wonderful blooms, withered after producing one cucumber that was noticeably smaller in the middle than on the ends:


At the beginning of both summers that we lived there, I thought about digging up a patch of ground in order to plant, but realized that would be a lot of work on a piece of land that wasn't mine and that I knew I wouldn't be able to use for more than a couple of years. So this was my "garden" for two years:


Imagine my elation when I saw that the house we were going to buy (and have since bought and moved into) already had a small patch for a garden dug up in the back. I made great mental plans for my first "real" garden and was extra excited because all the hard work had been done for me already. Reality check--when our offer was accepted, the sellers stopped maintaining the patch, and why not? They weren't going to be able to use it.

The day we closed on the house, the garden was a little--weedy. No problem, I thought. I'll just get out there and weed and then plant. Then it rained and rained and rained, and we moved and unpacked and it rained some more and next thing I knew, I had a garden absolutely full of weeds. Again, no problem--I decided I'd rent a tiller. Then I realized that new house owning is expensive and so is renting a tiller. I thought I was doomed to another summer of tomato plants in pots. However, with some encouragement from the hubby and some sound advice from my Momaw and Popaw and purchased a hoe and a rake and hubby and I spent an hour and a half after Nikhil went to sleep* digging up and "de-weeding" our little garden patch.

"Working the ground" was an cathartic and rewarding experience--for the first 45 minutes. After that, it was tiring and a little frustrating. I realized how spoiled I am by modern convenience when I lamented about how people used to have to do what we were doing times 12 in order to eat (as if their aren't still people who do so today).

Yesterday, we planted. Lots of tomatoes and a pepper plant. My herbs are still on the porch so that I can get to them easily when I'm cooking. I can't tell you how many times I have looked out the window and walked back to the corner of the yard today to look at the plants--as if anything would have grown by now.

I'm thrilled about my garden in the ground.

*Before you question our parental wisdom on this one, the patch is not far from the back door and we had the monitor with us.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

A Return to Blogging

Wow, it's been a while since that last post. Ironically, my car is in the shop again as we speak, though it has not been there this entire time, though that wouldn't be shocking giving poor Jazzy's constant maladies.

I've started a new blog about my life as a new mom, with a new job (motherhood), in a new house (yay for homeownership) with a newly minted MD husband. (Are you sensing a theme here?)

You can check it out here.

My plan is to begin updating both blogs, because after all, there is more to life than motherhood (Right? If not, please allow me to remain oblivious!)