"I want to grow some vegetables."
My mother says, "Okaaaay. . ."
That's usually how she responds when I'm about to tackle an endeavor she's has not expected. You see, I'm not that good with plants. Translation: I kill green things. However, living out in the country I've been invigorated by all this spring renewal blossoming and flourishing around me. I want to grow something. It's not time for us (yet) to talk about a baby, and while I've never given much thought to flowers and dirt and plants my little house and its huge blank canvas has inspired me. So, I set about making myself a little garden.
Now, as I have mentioned, money isn't exactly growing on the tree we're nesting in. I'm redefining "resourceful" around here. Almost nothing is wasted. My sister is my little Green Disease, and infected me about a year and a half ago with the "Green Living" bug. I collect compost materials to bring to my mother's house (she has composter and I don't have one - yet!), what few plastic grocery bags we come home with when I don't bring enough reusable shopping bags are repurposed for bathroom trash bags. Plastic bottles and gallon jugs are cut to use as paint buckets and the scraps are recycled. I have my limits, but before I throw anything away, I ask myself: "How can I use this in the next 30 - 60 days?" That time frame keeps me accountable to not just keeping anything. That said, understand I didn't have ANY gardening supplies. No tools. No pots. No potting soil. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. That posed a problem, no? Not for my Jesus. :-)
Here came Mom to the rescue as an answer to my prayer! She gave me a handful of seed packets. Then my son comes home from a Dad-weekend with a pot of wildflowers and grape tomatoes! Sweeeeet. I'm almost there! I have stuff to plant, now I needed something to plant WITH. Hmmmm. . .
Well, last Sunday I checked out my Sunday paper and couponing website Southern Savers and made a delightful discovery: 8lb bag of potting soil on special for 99 cents a bag for three days only at a local drug store and had $1 garden tools as well! I cried out in joyful excitement and my husband gave me The Eyebrow. I didn't care, I was gonna garden this week!
Here comes the disclaimer: the potting soil and tools I purchased for $4.00 are not the highest quality, so that means more elbow grease. According to my mother, I have to mix the soil and my plants will need more attention for watering and so forth. The hand tools I purchased are a three-prong cultivator and a trowel. I fully expect to have to replace them with something more durable, but for now it was in my budget and met my needs. I don't mind the little extra hard work.
Moving on now. . .I already had an all-purpose mop bucket I purchased at a discount store for $2.00 and an old bath towel that had been stained pretty badly to use for something to sit on while digging in the dirt. My mom always had something to sit on and something to haul her stuff around with her, so I guess that's why I decided these were on my list of "must haves" for my own little garden. This past weekend, we were driving home and on the way, we were passing a strip of road where there has been some tree-clearing going on and inspiration hit for a border/edge for my garden: cut trees! I pulled over and my husband grabbed some pieces and threw them in the trunk of my Ford Focus and off we went. I laid them out in the sunniest piece of our property and started weeding Sunday to start burying my treasured seeds by this weekend.
Well, little did I expect to find buried treasure! We have found an old Coca-Cola bottle bottled in Griffin, Georgia and broken pieces of china and pottery. I was out weeding again today and my husband was mowing the grass trying to beat the rain, and he found three more bottles and some broken milk glass from some vintage beauty products! Pictures coming soon! I have to wash the eons of aged dirt off. We're wondering if there was a barn or a home that burned down at some point in the past. . .now we're excited to start digging some more, in the yard and at city hall to learn a little more about the house's history.
Oh! Here comes the rain and my husband. Time to feed my fellas and finish preparing for my sweet Spirit-sister in Christ, who is arriving tonight to stay for the weekend. God bless you and your nest!
Here comes the disclaimer: the potting soil and tools I purchased for $4.00 are not the highest quality, so that means more elbow grease. According to my mother, I have to mix the soil and my plants will need more attention for watering and so forth. The hand tools I purchased are a three-prong cultivator and a trowel. I fully expect to have to replace them with something more durable, but for now it was in my budget and met my needs. I don't mind the little extra hard work.
Moving on now. . .I already had an all-purpose mop bucket I purchased at a discount store for $2.00 and an old bath towel that had been stained pretty badly to use for something to sit on while digging in the dirt. My mom always had something to sit on and something to haul her stuff around with her, so I guess that's why I decided these were on my list of "must haves" for my own little garden. This past weekend, we were driving home and on the way, we were passing a strip of road where there has been some tree-clearing going on and inspiration hit for a border/edge for my garden: cut trees! I pulled over and my husband grabbed some pieces and threw them in the trunk of my Ford Focus and off we went. I laid them out in the sunniest piece of our property and started weeding Sunday to start burying my treasured seeds by this weekend.
Well, little did I expect to find buried treasure! We have found an old Coca-Cola bottle bottled in Griffin, Georgia and broken pieces of china and pottery. I was out weeding again today and my husband was mowing the grass trying to beat the rain, and he found three more bottles and some broken milk glass from some vintage beauty products! Pictures coming soon! I have to wash the eons of aged dirt off. We're wondering if there was a barn or a home that burned down at some point in the past. . .now we're excited to start digging some more, in the yard and at city hall to learn a little more about the house's history.
Oh! Here comes the rain and my husband. Time to feed my fellas and finish preparing for my sweet Spirit-sister in Christ, who is arriving tonight to stay for the weekend. God bless you and your nest!
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