Gardening

I want to be a gardener really bad. I want to grow beautiful plants and flowers and vegetables. I want to do all this naturally and easily and perfect. I want to pick the perfect combination of evergreen plants and plants that flower so that they complement each other and look great. I really want to have a green thumb.

Unfortunately, no offence mom, I inherited my mom's ungreen thumbs. Mom always says that she can even kill silk plants. So needless to say I wasn't reared in a plant growing environment. I have no idea what I am doing.

I am trying though. Two summers ago, we had just moved into our house and I wanted to attempt a garden...again. I have tried a garden in almost every place that we had lived every year with zero success. I spent 3 weeks shoveling, raking, weeding, de-rocking (which by the way breed like rabbits where we live), raking some more and then tilling so that I could get this garden planted. It actually worked. We grew tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins and corn. The peas and the beans didn't turn out right, but everything else was great. I was really proud of my self. I made salsa and we had corn every night for weeks, we even carved my own homegrown pumpkins for Halloween. I couldn't wait to do it again.

Then we had to level our yard for grass. Ryan got a tractor and fill dirt and began leveling our back yard. Unfortunately, because of the rocks, during this process my garden area got filled back in with rocks. I was so discouraged because I had worked so hard de-rocking it in the first place, I didn't plant last year.

So here we are, Spring again, and I got back at it. I turned it all over again, de-rocked it again and lucky me Ryan is building a fence and an arbor for the area. It looks great. I've got my peas planted and when it warms up again (we are on the down part of our Spring roller coaster) I will get my potatoes and carrots in. I'm going to paint the fence and arbor white and then grow some kind of vine over it. It's going to look so cute.

I am working on my green thumb, I have 2 flower beds in the front yard that are still dirt because I want to pick the perfect combination of bushes, perennials, annuals and bulbs. I keep reading my Western Gardening book like its Harry Potter. I'll keep asking my neighbors, who incidentally have very green thumbs what to do next. Maybe one day I will earn that thumb and be able to give my grand kids advice in their gardens.