Green Thumbing It

Me and my guy spent the weekend doing yard work. Saturday we worked side by side. Him with a mower. Me with a chainsaw. After he got the front yard looking great and I cut a small overgrown tree from the side yard down, we decided that we were going to turn the flower bed in front of our little house into a garden.

If the world is going to hell in a hand basket, it seems now is the time to start growing a little bit of food. I’ve had a garden before. A couple times, actually. And I usually go way too big. I think that is the main issue with many beginner gardeners. So this year, we decided to just plant the things we know we will eat. So we cleaned out the flower bed. I pulled weeds, my guy shoveled and really got down to the nitty gritty of it. We called it a day on Saturday and felt really accomplished. This was the first weekend he didn’t have to work his second job. So when we woke up Sunday, we made breakfast and my guy  (I’m trying to get away from calling him Flea Market Guy now that he’s practically my husband so bear with me) decided he was going to do more yard work in the back yard.

We have a pretty big back yard and the evergreen trees back there were just growing wild. We had talked about cutting them “up.” As opposed to cutting them down. They are about 30 feet tall and provide some privacy and some shade, but they were really overgrown. While he was working on the backyard, I went and did a few instacart orders. I’ve been finding lots of satisfaction shopping for people who can’t get out or shouldn’t. I know I will probably eventually get sick even though I am being very, very cautious, but for now, I am well and I feel like it’s a nice way to help while padding our bank account with some extra cash just in case things get a lot worse. And I feel really lucky that I can work when there are so many people who have lost their jobs.

Anyway, while I was Instacart-ing, my guy was in the back yard cutting the trees so that we can walk under them. And he is about 6’6″ tall, so he did a lot of cutting considering they were touching the ground. And he mowed the back yard and burned some of the dead wood we had back there. By time I got home, he had a six foot pile of brush in the back yard and it looked like a whole different place.

We moved the pile from the back yard to the front so the city can hopefully come get it and then we high fived, called it a day and went inside to shower and make dinner.

We both worked yesterday, but we ended up getting home around the same time and after batting my eyelashes at him a couple times we took a halfway essential trip to the store to grab some soil, compost and some vegetable plants. I know it could have waited, but in my defense, I had been out in the world all day delivering other people’s groceries and we waited until the store was about to close and just ran in and out in less than 20 minutes. We are really good speed shoppers.

And then we came home and planted our little garden. In less than an hour, we gained about 4 hours of inner peace. It was so nice getting my hands dirty. I kind of feel like I cheated by buying plants that were already growing, but I’ve tried to grow plants from seed and I usually either have way too many or kill them before they ever really had a chance.

So now, we have 2 tomato plants, one jalapeno plant, one red pepper plant, 6 sugar snap pea plants (even though I think only 4 are going to survive), 6 broccoli plants and 6 romaine lettuce plants.

I think I am going to still plant some carrots and onions if I can get the Yucca out of the other flower bed. I’m also going to try watermelon and potatoes. And then that’s it. If I can make that work, I will be one happy camper.

So I’m trying to green thumb it, but I am definitely open to suggestions from actual gardeners because Flea Market Guy (aka “my guy”) says now that we have the plants we are obligated to not let them die. And I agree. So, no dead plants on our watch.