Gardening

I'll share more of my journey of becoming a mother later on, but right now I want to write about something near and dear to my heart...gardening! Ever since I was a child I enjoyed playing in dirt. Yeah I tended to be a "tomboy" even though I loved being girly too. Even as I loved playing with my dolls, wearing dresses, and pretending to be a mommy, I also loved being outside playing in the dirt with little cars, trucks, and tractors with my step-brother or helping my Grandpa with farming, working in the fields, on the tractors, fixing fences or helping my Mom milk the cows, raising my own calves, and helping my Mom and Grandma in the huge garden that they planted every year. Sure being a kid and all...there was times I complained about having to pull weeds, but deep down inside I liked getting my hands in the dirt, picking off the potato bugs, especially loved planting the seeds and watching them grow! When I was a kid in Nebraska I grew my own little flower garden that I was so proud of, I planted it and cared for it all by myself. Then when we moved to Missouri my step-dad had a big flower garden around our pond and I was involved with helping out with it pulling weeds and such, but I wanted a garden of my own, especially vegetables, because as much as I love beautiful flowers (that's my girly side), vegetables are practical and useful and healthy and provide nutrition...plus the motherly side of me liked knowing how to take care of family and children someday, so when I was a teen one year I planted and grew my own little garden, with some help, but mostly by myself I took care of it. Than after my husband and I were married, later off and on we grew some gardens on our little farm, but at that time I didn't really appreciate all the hard work that went into it, plus my husband was on the road a lot and I guess I didn't think I could handle the responsibly all by myself and I was really involved with another aspect...my passion for horses...training/breeding/raising them. (but as usual that is another story...haha) So anyway it was my hope to eventually get back into gardening once I had kids and became a mother, some reason gardening and mothering seemed to go hand and hand in my mind. When I finally had my little boy I was disappointed that we lived in a RV park with pavement all around and no dirt to play in...not just for me, but all little boys need dirt right?! So we did the next best thing...we bought little box planters and soil. We bought the upside down tomato hangers that you see advertised everywhere and we set up our own little garden spot under the front of our trailer and put tomato plants in the hangers and believe it or not we actually were able to have fresh tomatoes and herbs that year, plus some pretty shade flowers too! When we moved to the house we are in now the next year, I was so happy and excited to finally have a backyard to plant a "real" garden even though small compared to the gardens we grew in Missouri or Nebraska it was wonderful and that is when I fully realized that this was something I really truly loved and wanted to learn more about...it became a passion for me, sort of a way to bring the "country" to me since I had to live in town. In fact I'm more into gardening now than I ever was when I did live on our little farm...lol. I started seeds indoors for the first time and than when the plants were big enough carefully planted them outside in the little patch of dirt that my husband tilled up. I prayed and hoped they would produce wonderful veggies and they did! We had zucchini, cucumbers, swiss chard, orange and red tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and yellow squash. It was amazing to me! I knew I had found a new passion in my life...I can seriously say I love gardening...even weeding is enjoyable now, because I know I'm getting something worthwhile done. This year I wasn't too sure how I was going to handle a new baby and a garden, but so far it's been going wonderfully well and I'm excited again for the second year in a row to be growing a vegetable garden and one of the things that I love to see is my little boy helping, learning and enjoying it too, I feel like I'm teaching him something that will be useful to him his whole life...instilling a love of nature, gardening, and the outdoors in him, even though we are not living in the country like I'd always hoped for. There is still TONS more I want to learn about gardening, it is hard work, but a fun experience for me and my family!!