Living the Green Thumb Life

One of the original goals of this blog was to share not just the cancer-heavy parts of my life but the "living" parts as well, to help remind both you and myself that there are many other aspects to my life that are still worth brag- I mean, blogging - about.  One glance through my previous posts, and I realized I have been woefully behind on my own goal.  If I were being evaluated using the Massachusetts Educator Evaluation System, here I would surely score "needs improvement."  How dare I be so under-qualified, unable to meet my own goals?  I must strive to be exemplary!


This past weekend Tom and I enjoyed one of the perks of being homeowners: designing, constructing and planting raised garden beds.  We have been talking about building raised beds for years, so we were pumped to finally do it.  Just as a good art teacher should, I took many photos (I mean, "collected evidence") as we went along: after all, creative endeavors are about the process too, not just the end product.

When we first moved into the house, we noticed there was a pile of random junk behind our garage.  My dad and I excavated that area a couple weeks ago, and found an old beam that was likely taken out of the house when it was renovated several years ago.  Since I'm cheap and always looking for ways to use free stuff, I liked the idea of using the beam as part of the frame for our garden beds.  Tom and his dad put the rest of the bed frames together using standard kiln-dried lumber, attached them to the beam, and placed them right down on the grass.  Again, trying to reuse and recycle like thoughtful citizens of earth, we lined the bottom of the beds with pizza boxes and newspapers to cover up the grass.

Our soil here is pretty rocky and not good for growing much, it's essentially riverbank.  We ended up buying topsoil from a local, family-run farm and garden center.  As we usually do for big projects, we made an effort to get as much of our garden materials as we could at local small-business places, particularly businesses in Stow.  Gotta be good neighbors, after all.

To the soil we added some compost and peat moss.  Unfortunately, our compost wasn't ready to use for the gardens this year, so we had to buy it; I'm hoping next year it'll be in better shape.  Then we mixed it all up and spread it out.  And despite having surgery less than three weeks ago, I was able to do the raking.  You can see I'm just so thrilled.

After mixing, we added the last of the soil and spread it all out evenly.  Or, at least we tried to add the last of the soil... Athena had a different vision for the remaining dirt.

She's so helpful.

Once Tom was able to get the rest of the soil out from under the dog, we were finally able to plant!  We had gone to Russell's Garden Center in Wayland, which is definitely the most extensive garden center I have ever experienced.  The place just kept going.  They had six different kinds of cilantro to choose from for pete's sake.  It's a good thing we weren't ready to do any flower gardens yet, otherwise we would still be there...

Our crop this year is centered around two concepts: things we eat the most, and things we're less likely to kill.  The smaller bed in the back has two rows of turnips, four cilantro plants, and six tomato plants: two sun sugars, a rose, an early girl, a supersonic, and a black sea man.  The front of the large bed is lined with herbs: two kinds of basil, oregano, two kinds of thyme, rosemary, sage, and chives.  In the back we have five pepper plants: two jalapenos, a serrano, a poblano, and a sweet red.  In the back corners we have a yellow summer squash mound and a pie pumpkin mound, and tucked in between it all are regular orange carrots and something called a dragon carrot, which, clearly, we got because it's called a dragon carrot.

In addition to our raised beds, we've added a couple potted rosemary plants and some lemongrass to our back patio, in hopes they will help deter mosquitoes.  Living next to a river has its benefits, but the skeeters aren't one of them.

I have to admit, that's a pretty good lookin' back yard.  I may be bored with being at home all the time, but at least it's a nice place to hang out.  Every day I think how grateful I am that we found our house, and how wonderful it is that we love where we live.  Despite the stress we've had to deal with this year, I consider myself lucky that we have the life that we do: we're happy with our home, our town, our dog, our jobs, our families, and each other.  Can't get much better than that.  And now we can add being happy with our garden to the list.  I just hope we can successfully maintain that happiness, and not end up with a nicely organized pile of dirt, weeds, and half dead shrubbery.  I guess we'll find out.