I Paint My Thumb Green...

I don’t think I was born with a green thumb. I’m not a natural gardener, in fact, I’ve killed countless houseplants and any garden I’ve ever planted has been mediocre at best. My husband already claimed that my garden will fail; before the seed was even in the ground. Last year, was a wash as I was caring for a young baby; or at least that was my excuse. Mitch did end up putting in some potatoes last year, without any help from me. Yet for all my gardening insufficiencies, I have always enjoyed the “fruit” of gardens, and so this year I will make the effort to grow a good garden.

Here is the "before" picture.

I am a 4^th generation farm wife on the Schultz Family Farm. The Schultz wives have always had very good gardens. In fact, our entire back yard used to be a garden. I’ll try to give you an idea of how large an area that it is the following photo. I feel as though I may be dropping a legacy…

My garden is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller, although it is still bigger than many whole back yards in the city. I have actually given in to the encroaching grass (my ever present enemy) along the one side of the garden and allowed it to become about 6 feet narrower than what it was a few years ago.

 I bought my seed and some small plants last week because I had intended to plant my garden on Thursday evening when Jett was asleep. However, the clouds in the sky had other plans and the cold weekend pushed me to wait for today; a gorgeous day. Here are the plants and seed that took up space in my kitchen for a few days.

 Jett was outside for pretty much the whole day. I roto-tilled during his morning nap, and began planting during his afternoon nap. I am thankful for a wonderful mother in law who lives next door because I realized early on that my busy boy did not make a good gardening sidekick. She watched him for a large chunk of the afternoon so that I could get everything in the ground. I did get some fun pics and even some video footage of my little "helper" though.

AND... drum roll please.... the "AFTER" pics:

It feels very good to have this garden planted and I'm happy with how it turned out thus far. I think I may par for all of the bending etc. I did tomorrow, but I think it's worth it. Only time will tell if my loving husband is right. In his defence, he DID tell me it looks good. :)