The joy my garden brings me

Today I am thankful for a few things in particular.  You know, besides being alive and having a roof over my head, food in my belly, yadda yadda. 

The adventures of Black Gold and the Killer Migraine

What?!?

Let me assist you...

Progress continues

I know I did one of these posts less than a week ago, and you are probably thinking...how much can really happen in a week?  Or more importantly, do I even care?

Yes, yes you do!

One reason you care is because you love me :)  The next reason you care is because you may just be lucky enough to be a recipient of the wonderful bounty this garden shall behold.

Progress

Every time I see my brother-in-law, I swear he has grown more.  He's now 16, and I've known him for over 6 years.  He's gone from a slender, short little boy to a towering 6ft+ young man [and handsome, too].  It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen quickly.  I feel the same way with my kids; my friends who don't see them often feel like ages have gone by, when really it's been only months. 
The same thing happens with my garden.  I began it near the end of April, and here we are looking towards Memorial Day weekend.  It's hard for me to notice the change.  After all, I go out practically every single day.  Days I don't go out I stalk my garden like some anti-social creeper peeking through the blinds.  I've noticed changes from a few days of steady rain, and remember what it looked like when everything was first planted.  I thought it might be fun to look at 'before' and 'progress' photos of the garden to see side by side exactly what has grown in a matter of weeks!! 
I'm excited..

The red, white, and blue at 1082

Awhile ago while at Target [love that store!], I was browsing their dollar section [love that section!] and stumbled upon these cute, little metal containers.  They were all different bright colors, and had star designs punched out of the sides.  I bought three-a red, white and blue one-with the intention of putting cute flowers in them for the steps out front.  My vision?  Red in the red, white in the white, and blue in the blue!

Sounds easy, right?  Well...if you know anything about flowers, you know that finding a blue flower small enough to fit into a 2-cup planter is like trying to find a trowel in a haystack.  Not as hard as finding a needle, but challenging enough.  But I was determined to plant the appropriate color plants in my newly made planters!

The Sounds of Nature Part One

I'm in the living room with the windows open to bring in the fresh, cool breeze.  The sun is trying to give some light from behind a sky full of clouds.  It smells, and feels, like rain.  The baby birds are chirping away, in the distance I can hear an airplane.  The clock reads 12:34 and all is quiet in my home, a rare moment indeed.  With the cool air on my face, the sound of spring outside, and my warm computer on my lap, it's time to update on my haven: the garden.

It's been awhile!

Wow!  I haven't blogged in over a week.  I must have been busy...or miserable.  Turns out it was both!  I figured while I sit here with an uber sick little boy, I could catch up. 

We had our wonderful friends from Pittsburgh in town this past weekend, and that meant I spent my week cleaning, organizing, doing laundry, more cleaning, and baby-proof/de-peanut the house.  I enjoyed it, really.  I like cleaning, just not cleaning through migraines.  And the company was wonderful!  It was nice having a baby in the house again, and the kids had a great time.  I was in my garden over the weekend, and even received a beautiful lily for Mother's Day from our friends.  I had a rough couple days after that, and finally got out into the garden yesterday evening after a nice shower for both myself and the flowers [the kids watered them for me!].  

What a difference a day [or two] makes!  

A bad day

Monday, May 2
Being home for about two months with migraines, I have had my fare share of bad days.  Two trips to the ER, a hospital stay, missing events, intense pain.  You know...bad days.  This week, I feel as if I have been having more bad days than normal.  Or, really, I feel as if my bad days are getting worse.  How do I know?  Besides the three consecutive days with migraine pain at 7+ [on a scale from 1 to 10; that's how I live my life, folks-rating each day or moment by a number], I also am in no rush to check on my garden.

What?!

Little things grow in my garden

**Tonight's post contains some language that you may not want to use in church, around your grandparents, or-as parents know-in front of your children.  My apologies...but I gotta f*ckin' get it out somewhere.  Thank you.**

When I finished planting my garden yesterday, I did so in anticipation of rain.  The sky looked gloomy, my head was aching, and there was the smell of rain in the air.  I was hoping to get a hassle-free watering, since I do not have an outdoor source and am left asking my amazing husband John to fill up the husky watering can, which weighs more than a small child when full.  Instead of rain, I was merely teased by Mother Nature and blessed with a beautifully crisp night.  A night wonderful for walks around the block and riding the battery-operated mini-atv down the hill.  A night not so wonderful for virgin-to-the-elements, newly planted wonders of life.

How does my garden grow? A peek into 2011's anticipated bounty!

What am I planting this year?  Actually, that is a great question, and the one that inspired this blog in the first place.  It was realized after I made a list of all my plants that I could not fit into a status update on Facebook.  So, blog it was!!

SIDE GARDEN-NEW!

Let me begin my saying that this year, as a gift to myself and Mother Earth, I created a new flower bed.  It was a lot of hard work, including time spent picking out all the trash, broken bottle pieces, and beer tabs that saturated the soil below.  After two rounds of tilling, a re-plantation of the removed earthworms [we didn't want them getting shredded with the hoe!], and a nice manure/hummus treatment, the bed was ready for its flowers.

The beginning of a beautiful friendship

It all began with a book.  And an FMLA leave...

The gardening book was one I bought last year, in the beginning of the season, in hopes to stretch my gardening wings and try new things.  It's title "The Family Kitchen Garden" lead me to believe that it had everything I needed to really do some great things.  Last year, for many reasons, the growing season was not a good one for me.  The book remained with so many others gathering dust, as a working high school teacher of two toddlers rarely had time to read for pleasure.

Then, this spring, something horrible happened. 

Welcome! Allow me to answer a few questions for you.

Hello and welcome!

This introductory entry is meant to answer some questions one may have as they read the wonderful blog title [partially inspired by my best friend, totally inspired by who I am] and/or give some background information on why a dirty hippie would blog in the first place, what exactly do hippies garden, and if I really have anything worth saying.

So, what is a dirty hippy?
Normally, when someone mentions a dirty hippy, [Zapp Brannigan: "Blow it out your bong hole, hippy"] they are speaking of someone who does not maintain appropriate hygiene or wash their clothes, may have dirty dreads, enjoys the Grateful Dead, embraces liberalism in every form, and is usually poor and uneducated.

I am in no way, shape, or form, a dirty hippy.


Then what are you, besides confused?  I thought you said you were a dirty hippy?
I am not confused...at least right now.  And I am not a dirty hippy.  I am, however, a dirty hippie.  Notice the spelling difference.  It may mean nothing to you, but it means everything to me.

I am, and have been for a very long time, a self-proclaimed hippie.  What, exactly, does that mean?  It means I hate shoes; I garden without gloves [including when handling manure]; I think love is the best thing ever and is truly 'all you need'; I am almost always barefoot in the grass; the music of the 60's is near and dear to my heart; I make love, not war; and so on and so forth.


So, I understand the 'hippy' part; what about the 'dirty' part?  Don't you wash?
Hippie.  Not hippy.  The 'dirty' part refers to my lack of shoes and gloves when gardening.  Bastard.  I need to feel the dirt on my hands.  I own several pairs of gardening gloves, and of those there is one pair I use....sometimes.  I'm sure another reason I dislike gloves is because I have small hands.  And I mean small hands.  If you think yours are small, compare them to mine, and then you will realize how not small your hands are.  I think my kids hands are beginning to give mine a run for their money.


OK, so what does a dirty hippie with freakishly small hands do?  Garden?
Ding, ding, ding!  Would you like a cookie?

Yes, I enjoy gardening.  I love it, actually.  Hence the blog.  I have been gardening for as long as I can remember.  It began with our first row home, where we planted marigolds in the bed alongside our lovely, green-thumbed [and now as I think back to it, probably lesbian] neighbors' driveway.  In the back my mom had rose bushes and would plant perennials and annuals to keep the garden beautiful.  Mother's Day became our day to do planting, as the April showers brought us beautiful May flowers [which did not bring pilgrims]; a tradition was soon started as we planted bulbs of tulips, daffodils, and lilies around the exterior of our home.  As my mother and I became more experienced, we began adding herbs and vegetables to our repertoire, beginning with the classics like tomatoes and basil.

As soon as I had a home and yard area to call my own, I began to grow my passion in my own garden.  This year I stumbled upon a book that taught me all about year-round gardening.  I also read up on all the plants I wanted to work with, as well as information on composting, soil care, and getting the most out of my garden.  Gardening is something I enjoy greatly, despite my joints hating it.  This blog will allow me to share something I am passionate about with those who share a similar passion, or who just want to hear the ramblings of a dirty hippie.

One love
Sara :)