The Infrequent Gardener

Lately I’ve been incurably restless. My mum I’m sure is familiar with these little phases of mine – I spent a good deal of my teenage years wandering around the house, occasionally stopping by her room to announce my boredom and then shrugging off any of the activities (mostly chores) she suggested I take on to keep myself busy. This is how it’s going for me now: little sleep, no real enjoyment in anything, no ability to sit still and get something done. So yesterday, fed up with sitting at my computer begging it to adequately entertain me, I stood up and announced to Allan that I was going to go buy some plants.

I know nothing about gardening and every plant I have ever owned has had a short, anguished life of neglect. Still, this year I have been determined to start a garden, primarily for culinary purposes (buying bunches of fresh herbs and letting most of them go bad is getting to be an annoying ritual, and tomatoes and onions from my backyard is the most tantalizing thing I can think of, yard-wise). But weekend after weekend has passed without anyone else in the house initiating the garden project, and with it getting late in the season, I figure there’s no time like the present. So I bought a bunch of plants, not seeds as I had originally intended because I figured there was no time, and because that seemed more likely to fail regardless.

The trip to the store was lovely and easy – spending money is one of my strong suits. Coming home to plant them was another story.

This was what I decided would be my garden:

Yes, a patch in the middle of my mature lawn. There was digging to be done. Unfortunately I couldn’t for the life of me find a spade to do said digging with. So I grabbed an ice scraper and started lawn-gouging.

However hard you think this was, it was in fact a thousand times harder. After a couple hours and far more spider-related incidents than I care to mention, I had this beautiful chunk of bare soil

You’ll notice it isn’t quite square-shaped…I ran out of steam. Shortly after this was taken Laurie came home and found the spade, and also showed me a large piece of ground that seemed to have been recently sodded and where the grass came up with minimal coaxing (great, a little late, agh). The spade and I made short work of the rest of the square

At this point it was 11:00 pm and I was covered in dirt and sweat, so I abandoned the plants and went inside to shower and sleep.

Coming home from work today, all my digging muscles still aching badly, the last thing I wanted to do was spend the evening in the yard again, but goshdarnit if I wasn’t going to get those plants in the ground.

I am so freaking proud of myself you have no idea. I don’t know if any of these will work out – there’s a mix here of vegetables, flowers, and herbs, crammed into a relatively small area – but for now it looks awesome enough for me to sit and gaze at it with pride. Please come visit and gaze with me before all the plants die.

I’m going to go lie in bed and try to sleep away the too-out-of-shape for digging pains now, wish me luck!