And so it begins

In this, my inaugural post, I'm going to tell the story of how I got here, meaning to where I decided to start a blog.

In the 11 years my husband and I have lived in our house, I've always devoted some time to growing things. I started with flowers in the front yard, then I added a small garden plot with tomatoes in the back. Then I decided the vegetables were too much work and let the garden go back to grass. Then I thought I got brilliant and I started with raised beds. One four foot by four foot bed, to be precise. The next year, I added another four foot by four foot bed. The next year, I added a four foot by eight foot bed.

By this time, I was hooked on growing stuff I could eat, and I began yearning for an acreage in the country where I could have huge gardens and chickens, and everything else you'd imagine on a hobby farm. I regularly searched real estate listings for a small, cheap acreage in the area. And I saw a lot of them, but the reality was, my husband and I didn't have the money to buy one.

At about this time, we decided to remodel our kitchen. I'd hated it since we moved in, but we'd put it off for years, knowing that once we started, the whole thing had to go. The remodel doesn't add much to my story except this: my dad built all of our kitchen cabinets by hand. They are custom, one-of-a-kind, built exactly to my specifications. He worked on them for a year. I can't even remember how many colors we tried before we settled on the dye he used. And then, my husband and dad and a whole host of friends helped with the project. When it was done (or 98% done, as I call it), I looked at my husband and said, "You know this means we can't move out of this place for years." He said, "I know." I think that was his plan all along.

So there I was - nice kitchen, no acreage, 64 square feet of raised garden beds - when it finally dawned on my that I'd have to make the most of what I had. I told my husband I wanted to fence in a chunk of the backyard and make a real garden. He said, "go for it". When I waivered about making it very big, he said, "make it as big as you can". So, last fall we fenced off 300 square feet. I covered the whole area with a layer of cardboard (conveniently generated by our kitchen remodel), added some compost and dead leaves, and let it sit all winter.

It's spring now. I'm ready to start growing things. I've ordered seeds and plants. I spread three cubic yards of compost over the whole garden the other day, and I took a picture of it. That's when I realized that I wanted to share my progress with family and friends, and I wanted to document it for myself.

Being a blog junkie, this is where I ended up. I'm no writer and I'm no photographer, but the world has plenty of those already. I play in the dirt, and I'm going to tell you about it.

The garden April 7th