Progress

This is just a short, simple blog post by a girl who is excited about her growing garden. In fact, you can see these same pictures in my last post, only now, my garden is flourishing and more full! 

I've gotta say, I am legitimately proud of, not only keeping these plants alive, but for the fact that they are edible (so far). And although I do realize I am making it sound like I've accomplished some amazing feat... it sort of feels like I have.

I know that, at one time, growing your own food was a necessity rather than a novelty or hobby. I know that there are folks out there who grow enough food to make up a majority (if not all) of their daily intake. There are people who have perfected aspects of gardening, amplified output and diminished costs from their wallets as well as from the earth. And I can barely call myself a beginner, if anything I am still a student. 

I am watching beautiful, shiny peppers grow bigger and bigger... fuzzy little snap peas pop up all over the tops of their vines... bright orange squash blossoms opening with the sun and closing in the evening... but still, I have yet to consume anything from my garden besides lettuce. Patience... patience.

I worry... who knows if anything will turn out right! I've still got potatoes, beets and onions that I can't see and squash and tomatoes that haven't begun to fruit yet. There are already a few failures, all of our garlic died (but at least we know why) and I think my broccoli is bolting. But I'm learning so so much, if nothing else. We already have new ideas, improvements, for the winter garden. Next Spring, we plan on going bigger... I'd like to learn more about (or improve upon) succession planting... and I'd like to grow as much as we can from seed. Watching those tiny seeds germinate and those little pieces of green popping out of the dirt was so much more gratifying than planting our Home Depot transplants... I want to do more from scratch and less bought from the store.

Going out to the garden and picking my husband and I a salad before dinner is seriously one of the best feelings... and I swear, it makes the lettuce taste better. There is something primitive about it all, something so satisfying about watering your garden that doesn't make it feel like a chore (minus the mosquitoes, I could do without those guys). I feel like I've finally joined a club that was never really that hard to get into but people never really talked about it so I never knew how awesome it was. I mean, I've always thought growing your own food was rad but I never realized it could be so exciting. It makes me so much more excited for my goats to be producing milk... I get butterflies thinking about a salad from my garden, topped with a buttermilk dressing from fresh goat milk. I could cry.