Let There Be Gardening

I take a break from this oppressive book proposal writing - damn you, sample chapters - to just say that things are starting to grow around here.

There is gardening, something new to the Foster family, but now that we also have this country life to add to our city life, we have large expanses of dirt and ground and gardens that will not flower and bring forth life, unless we give them some of our attention.

David and I were tilling (it's strange to even write that word in the same sentence as our names) the flower beds and I had this epiphany and looked up at him and said, "Gardening is hard work," as if I had said something completely new and original. He shook his head and went back to turning up the soil. I am, it seems, Captain Obvious.


Truth is, the whole family is enjoying this gardening thing. I didn't marry a handy man, but I'll be damned if David has turned into a hotter version of Bob Villas, with his swarthy tool belt and destroying things with chain saws. And me, well, I used to pity people who worked in the dirt, I lamented that they always had soil in their nail beds and bugs in their hair, now, I'm having lengthy Twitter conversations with Mrs. Wheelbarrow about the pros and cons of ornamental grasses and whether I should ask David to buy me a Weeping Higan Cherry Tree for Mother's Day...

What happened to jewelery? Who am I?



The kids love gardening, too. Especially Lucy. She has this long attention span and ability to focus on one thing for a long time and planting the seeds in neat rows was right up her alley. Also, gardening offers all the right elements - opportunity to get dirty, opportunity to play in dirt, opportunity to play in dirt and get dirty and add water. Drowning the plants in water with the big over-filled watering can is our favorite pastime.


We started small, with the idea of a container garden, growing the seedlings for flowers and vegetables in our green house first and then, later hoping to transplant them into containers. But now, the gardening bug has taken us over, our beans and peas are shooting out of their trays and we see urban farming as our path. Sigh.

Even David is plotting the outdoor garden space and saying things like, "Do you think it's possible we'll be able to grow all our own vegetables this summer?" and I hear myself say back, "Yeah, I think so, I think with the greenhouse, we can have an all year round garden, rotating in and out hot and cold weather vegetables..." and then I start talking about canning and how much tomato sauce I can put up for the winter. And then, I just have no idea who I am anymore, although she sounds a lot like Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother, and I sort of sit quietly and hope the strange voices stop talking to me.


But weirdly, I can't wait to get back to the country and check on my peas. I should've staked them last week and now, I'm worried about them, worried I might find them toppled over and failing. I am secretly considering pulling Lucy out of school so we can get back up there and check on them. Right now, I am holding back the desire to write a whole paragraph about my peas. This is truly pathetic.

xo YM