Gardening

I love to garden. I discovered gardening a few years ago when we were still living in a north-facing high-rise where we could barely grow shade plants on our balcony. My husband mentioned to me that a friend of his was going to be joining a community garden and did we want to join as well. I knew nothing of gardening but I do love the Farmer's Market and cooking so figured I'd give it a go.

Our community garden was about a mile from our house as they are fairly popular and it was the only one we could get in to. Coincidentally, or not so much, we were given a plot that was literally a weedy field. Joel went to great lengths tilling and prepping the soil, adding organic matter and breaking up the clay. We sowed our seeds and watched the plants begin to emerge. I was completely hooked.

This was the same time that we were on the tail-end of fertility treatments and were beginning to explore adoption. With no control over my own ornery and stubborn fertility it was nice to be able to have a small hand in creating and producing something.

It was an extremely therapeutic hobby. I loved quiet mornings by myself in the garden weeding and monitoring the progress of our food. We grew lettuce, carrots, beets, Swiss chard, broccoli and a lot of herbs. I decided that gardening was the perfect hobby for me. We stayed in the community garden for a couple of years. There were high and low points of being a in a community garden. There was a lot of theft of vegetables, vandalism and water would arbitrarily be turned off. This wasn't the best experience for someone projecting their fertility onto a plot of land.

Last year when we bought our house, we still had a large plot in the community garden and the owners of the home we bought had planted a small garden with squash, eggplant, tomatoes, kale and lettuce. We had two gardens and it was heavenly.

This year we are focusing on the garden in our own backyard and freeing our space in the community garden for someone else. Joel spent last weekend preparing raised bed boxes and we've been growing our seedlings since February. Nora, still a bit sleepy from being sick, took a two hour nap and we were able to plant most of the garden. It was such a great experience for Joel and I to have time together and to know that we won't be making runs to the grocery store for produce all summer. I've already begun to harvest the lettuce and peas that I planted in March and the Swiss chard isn't too far behind. I'm so excited to have our own garden right outside our back door this year and I can't wait to share my love of gardening, cooking, food and eating with Nora.