Our Garden

 

   One of the surprises that I got when we bought the house that we live in was discovering that the property contained a small raised garden. I found this out the day we moved in when a neighbor came up to me and said, "I hope you are going to do something with this garden." The garden had been designed by a master gardener who lived in the house when it was first built.. The young men who bought the house had let it go.

   My parents had a large garden at the house I grew up in. They planted lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and other vegetables.  Sometimes my Dad would try to grow strawberries. Once he grew raspberries. There was a flower garden and Dad grew roses around the foundation in the front yard. As children part of our job was to help tend these gardens. I didn't mind. I especially liked helping to tend the roses and picking the flowers that grew. I even had a small patch where I could grow a flower called a four o'clock. I don't remember what they looked like now.

   After I got out of college, I had a few potted plants in the house. I never had much luck with them. The only exception was a strange vining plant that lived for many years and eventually dried up one day despite my care of it. The only gardening type things I did was to take care of the grass lawn in the houses I lived in.

   I was pretty intimidated by my new garden. We bought the house in August so there was nothing I could do with the garden that year. The next year I cleared the overgrowth of some of the plants and just left it. I wanted to see what was there and what I liked and didn't like.

  We had decided to divide the garden into two parts. The part closest to the house would be devoted to growing vegetables and herbs. The other part would contain flowers. The only exception to this rule was the tulips that came up randomly every year. I was too scared to move them for fear that I'd kill them and lose the tulips.

   Some years have been better than others. some summers I planted nothing and let the garden do what it wanted. Over the years, I've found what I like. I've been slowly adding perennials to the flower side so I don't have to spend money on plants every year. Now it 's more a matter of keeping things weeded and keeping things from overgrowing.

   C is sometimes frustrated with me when it comes to the garden. I insist on growing a basil plant, a lemon balm plant and if chamomile shows up I tend to it too. Sometimes I will use a few leaves for tea, but mostly I just like to smell the leaves and enjoy how they look. This frustrates him as he believes if I'm not going to use what they produce, they shouldn't be in the garden.

   I've found a certain satisfaction in growing thing things. This year we grew carrots again and our crop has been greater than the one last year, I planted some flower seeds which finally came up and are just now starting to bloom. I found that weeding is therapeutic. One time I pulled four small wheelbarrowfuls of weeds after a year of neglecting the garden. I was tired and sore, but also felt a lot better.

   Growing up in an agricultural community and spending time on my grandparents farm has given me a tie to the earth which I've never really lost. I think that's why I like gardening and why I have such and interest in recycling and keeping my patch of ground as healthy as I can. Even in the years when the fruits of our garden are small, I still enjoy tending it and hoping that next year things will be better. (This year we have a good yield of everything.)