The Black Thumb Project

If you build it, He will bless it...or at least that is my prayer.  You see, I am starting a new veggie garden this year!  I have a thumb that is pretty stinkin' black but I can't decide if its my lack of watering, lack of sunlit areas in a log house with wrap around porches, etc. Or maybe its that I have kids who like to dig in dirt. Any dirt will do but they just seem to LOVE to dig in any dirt found INSIDE the house!  I have many a pic of a child sitting in a circle of potting soil, some smeared around their mouth from the obvious ingestion of it (for fiber purposes I suppose), and a helpless little plant by their side.  I just can't seem to keep plants alive. Then I have this endless need to try to plant things from SEED! This is an obvious mistake of the newbie that you veteran green-thumbers snicker about behind my back.  My sister is one of those green-thumbers. She always has amazing plants that just grow and grow. Once she even gave me a precious plant that had grown too large for her small apartment. She decided that our "spacious" house would be the perfect place for it.  It was a death sentence for this huge, out of control, BIG, HEALTHY plant.  See, my, then one year old, little boy loved to dig in the dirt. He dug, so I moved the plant higher. He grew. I moved the plant outside. IT grew. I didn't see it, so I didn't water it. Big plant suffered and became little plant. I nurtured it. I brought it back inside. Little boy dug. You see the circle. Good, green-thumb-ownin' sister never gave me another plant. I offered it back to her, mostly dead, and completely sad, knowing that she could probably just look at it, and it would come to life in her gaze. Instead, her gaze turned to me as if I had killed her first born! So sorry sis!

Its not like I'm a newbie to dirt and seeds. I grew up in a family that gardens. Its not like any one of them are Martha Stewart (except maybe my sister) or Better Homes and Gardens kinda people. We are just poor kinda people!  We had to garden to eat!  And I hated it!  I don't like to get my hands dirty. I hate the way that feels. My hubby throws pottery and is very good at, but I know I never will be because I hate the way clay sucks every molecule of moisture out of your hands and there is no lotion in God's great creation that can help! Clay is just fancy dirt. It wasn't until a lovely little old lady introduced me to gardening gloves that I came to realize that I'm an idiot for not using them before.

And with all these obstacles in my way, still I want to garden.  Why, you ask?  Because I like to EAT!!!  I like veggies better than fruits. I like the harvest. I tolerated gardening as a kid so that I could have fried zucchini (still my only fried food guilty pleasure) and fresh corn. That summer meal, in a Meat and Potatoes kinda family, that consisted solely of veggies picked that morning!  I like to pick them and try them new ways. But I'm cheap! I spend a large chunk of my grocery budget on produce each week.  I hate that. I have a perfectly huge lot that our house sits on with land that should never have perked for a house, it holds water. Bad for houses, but good for gardens!  So I read and I planned and I drew up plans and I showed them to hubby. He hated them. I replanned. I redrew. I even built with my own hands a new pantry to store all my soon-to-come goodies from the ground. (I am MUCH better at building/crafting/remodeling than gardening.) Hubby then decided that if I was gonna go to that much trouble and build a HUGE pantry then I must be serious. He decided to take it into his own hands.

This is what I figured my garden would look like.....

This is how I want it to really look...

                             

And this is how it really looks (right now).

It isn't finished (the slats aren't on or stained to match the posts) but it will keep God's big critters out while I try to organically keep his smaller ones at bay and welcome the nice ones with pretty flowers. The flowers will also keep me smiling as they grace vases inside the house, bringing a little outdoors in! See?  My garden would have been small and simple but hubby's influence made it grand (and much more expensive) but much nearer to my inspiration picture!  I knew I married him for a reason...I'm just too darn cheap to buy what is really needed.

So, I see a certain person from our Bible class posting beautiful pics of her greenhouse successes(you know who you are!) and I'm just green with envy (and probably getting my tomato slips from her!). I see the pretty plants at the store and know that I can make mine look like that with time and patience. I did my homework. I did my composting. I have my pantry ready and my freezer bags stocked up.

 

Its just me and God now and I'm betting on the God part because the me part is seriously flawed.  I'm ready God! Bless me with produce and help me feed my family and any needing neighbors that might cross our paths. ...Somehow I get the feeling that its gonna start raining squash and I had better be careful what I pray for. So if I come with bags of produce to church, know that God has answered my prayers and He is blessing you too!