Garden Growth

I’ve really fallen in love with gardening this year. It has truly been my escape through all this craziness. I love walking into the garden to see the hummingbirds and butterflies fluttering around the patch of zinnias and sunflowers.

I love plucking fresh okra, cucumbers, tomatoes and squash off the vine. I’m excited to see how my luffa will turn out, and the eggplant that’s just starting to grow.

It’s a peaceful place to be, in the garden.

Of course there is a lot that I’m learning about when it comes to the negative aspects as well.

Such as fungus and mold and bacteria. Then there’s also a whole smorgasbord of pests, many that could survive a nuclear blast. From all this, I’m learning about what should be grown in a pot and what shouldn’t and how to do it better next year.

For example, I now understand that cabbage worms come from hell and peas hate heat. My potatoes did not do so well in the old tires. I’m not 100% sure why but I know that nothing came from them.

I got a small batch from the ones grown in the laundry baskets but not enough to say that I’d do it again. I plan on trying a few new “in the ground” methods next year and see which ones work best. The good thing is that I got enough potatoes to make a meal or two and enough to save for seed for next time.

It was however the best garden that I’ve put out so far, so at least it’s progress and not regress. I grew things that I’d never grown before and I had a few things pop up in the garden that I didn’t even plant.

(*ground cherry, currently researching recipes and uses)

My herbs did much better this year. I have more thyme than I knew what to do with, as well as mint and basil. My lavender is the biggest I’ve ever seen this year and the rosemary didn’t die. I hope to grow more next year, as well as more of a variety.

The year isn’t over and I plan on attempting some fall/late crops which I have never tried before.

The thing that I feel I’ve learned the most from gardening is the way that you have to flow with the seasons and the weather. You can’t control anything to an exact certainty. Instead you must figure out how to live along side it. Gardening is, more than anything, a lesson in patience.

Gardening requires you to take the seasons as they come. To appreciate everything in its turn. In the spring I planted, in the summer I worked and reaped a little, and in the fall I will do more of the same but with different crops.

The world may be changing. It may feel like it’s going a thousand different directions at once but in the garden things are the same as they’ve been since the beginning of time. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Plant, nurture, grow, harvest. It is a comfort to know that some things don’t change and some things are controlled by a force stronger than we are. Mother Nature demands respect always.