Here in Michigan, the weather is finally starting to warm up. That doesn't quite mean we're done with snow for the year (in fact, we expect 5-6 inches tonight!), but it means that all the old accumulation is finally starting to go away. Best of all, for the first time since December, the temperatures have exceeded 35!
Now that spring is starting to crawl towards us, I am getting excited about all the things it has to offer. More than anything else, I'm stoked about my garden. Last year, I wasn't around to start my own garden, and I ended up buying all my plants semi-matured from Home Depot. I don't have a problem with doing that, except that it cost a bundle to get everything I wanted to grow and buy all new materials for potting all the flowers and veggies. This year, I have been determined to save some money by starting all my own plants.
Our backyard gets very little sun because of the tree cover, so last year, we planted our garden on the back deck. The deck isn't very large, so it constrained our growth space quite a lot. I was quickly fed up with the lack of gardening space, so I painstakingly drew up a landscaping plan for the front of our house, where sunlight is abundant. In my elaborate plan, we would create a 15x30- foot mulched island which I would fill with ten raised beds of various sizes. That way, I was going to be able to plant everything I enjoyed eating - and also anything I ever wanted to try. My beds were going to run east to west, and the beds with my tallest plants would face north in adherence to all the gardening tips I'd devoured. Around my raised beds, I had planned mulched beds where I would plant the flowers that were purported to ward off particular bug infestations and keep my garden healthy. Everything was scratched with precision on my paper, graphite lines delineating the surefire ways I was going to make my garden grow.
I sent my husband a picture of my landscaping plan. He was not thrilled. I scaled it back to a 15x15 section of landscaping with six beds. Still, he was skeptical. He only started to entertain the possibility when I promised a 15x10 garden with six beds.
Within a few days, I dug myself out from the fantasy of my dream garden because it was clear to me that it would never be reality. HOA rules don't allow front yard gardening. And even if they did, we would have to remortgage the house to create the farmland I was proposing. In the end, like so many of my grand schemes, my idea had to be scratched. I still have the plan. Hashed lines bearing right delineate beds of marigolds and zinnias, lines bearing left mark beds of catmint and borage. Crossed lines mean larkspur and cosmos, and vertical lines mean sunflowers and delphiniums. For the life of me, I can no longer tell you why each of those plants is beneficial. But I can guarantee that they are.
Even without my massive garden, I was determined to up the ante this year. When we went in to our local gardening shop, I clutched my list of "must-purchase" seeds in my fist and flipped through the brightly-colored seed packets with lusty desire. I gathered everything on my list and so much more. Brussels sprouts? Why not? Canteloupe? Sure! By the time we left, I had acquired forty dollars worth of seed packets. My husband and I were sure we'd been overcharged. In reality, I was just overzealous.
Today I spread those packets out in front of me and got utterly giddy. I had my own seed packets, and I had time to plant them. I was going to get to start my own garden from seed to plant, as long as I got it right.
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