Garden planting

Just over a week ago....  our garden space: 

then, freshly rototilled:

{ our chickens were happy! }

planting:

What Audra did while we planted:

This day she was collecting worm families, but she also collects caterpillars, roly-poly bugs and snails.  She names them, too.

See what I mean about my basil?  I always kill it! 

I began with six starts, and all but two have died.

So then I purchased the Trader Joe's variety- full, happy, healthy plants.

And now they're dying.

~sigh~

 I'm determined to get an herb garden started, though.  That's basil on the left.

I've been thinking lately about how I'm an unlikely gardener.  We never had a vegetable garden growing up.  My grandparents did, but my family never did.  And I hated to weed- sometimes mom had me weed her flower beds and I always dreaded that chore.  There were times we went out to weed my grandparents' garden and I just remember I would SO rather be playing with my cousins.

Then I married Mark.  As soon as we bought our house, he was so excited about planting a garden-- which was sort of odd to me.  Gardens meant work and not the kind of work I like.  It's taken me several years to get to the place where I truly do enjoy it.  I don't even mind the weeding anymore.  Some days I even like it.

{ cutting lilacs to bring into the house }

I'm thankful that even though most of the time I don't really know what I'm doing, gardening is a very forgiving hobby.  We rarely prune our lilac trees but we get lilacs every single year.  We forget to replant our tulip bulbs but they keep cheerily coming up each spring.  We forget to weed our raspberries but we'll get some anyway.  We plant seeds and vegetables grow- maybe not as many as we'd like- and our garden may not get the weeding it deserves, but we'll get vegetables. 

We've learned so much and we continue to learn, a little here, a little there.  I'm trying to remember to look things up: Why is my basil plant turning yellow and looking sad?  Why are the leaves on one of our blueberry bushes turning yellow?  How do I tie back our tall raspberry bushes?  When should we prune?  We forget things, every season, and still we get fruit and flowers.  I am thankful.