Today we gardened. I’ve posted before about my family’s wonderful gardens at home. I haven’t been particularly active in planting or looking after them the past several years, due to college and then, you know, moving to Seattle. This year Eric & I got a 10×20 foot plot in a local garden, and I’ve been so excited to get to work on it. We were shown the patch yesterday. It was well-structured, but also covered almost completely in mulch – not at all what I was looking for – and I knew we had some work ahead of us.

This what it looked like before:

And here it is after:

Today was pretty rainy and we got very muddy and completely soaked during the three hours we spent there. The boards on both sides of the garden were falling over, so I pulled them up and re-dug the trenches they were in to keep them stable. The mulch was a nightmare to rake up – it probably would have been good to wait til it was dry, but I was just so excited to get to work!

The plot is a beautiful size, and I really liked the two corner beds, so we kept them. There were raspberries in one of them. According to the garden rules I read, raspberries are considered invasive and not allowed in P-Patch gardens, but the volunteer who showed us our patch seemed to think they were fine.

I’m undecided on whether or not I want them. I think they’ll get out of control and I’m not sure it’ll be worth the trouble, but I do really like raspberries, so if they produce fruit it would be lovely. We ended up pulling up half and leaving half, and we’ll see what they do. In the other half of the bed we planted the four strawberry plants we picked up from the plant sale yesterday.

In the other corner bed there was already a beautiful chive plant (not visible), and so we left that. I initially wanted to plant basil in this bed and make it our herb corner, but I ended up planting some leeks and onions instead, since the rest of the garden was very wet and this corner was more easily accessible. I do need to reconfigure the leeks and onions into more closely-spaced rows; I’m hoping to supplement these plants with some seedlings I’ll be starting inside.

I also ended up leaving the long narrow bed along one side. Those boards were in good shape and it was a good-sized space. We planted arugula and spinach in it today, and we’re going to use the rest of it for broccoli, lettuce, carrots, and maybe some peppers. The rest of the bed will be filled with our other vegetables, and I’m hoping to have a corner for Cosmos and Zinnias. We already planted some snow peas, and I have to go back before we leave to put up some trellises for them to climb.

I’m a little worried because I don’t have a lot of gardening knowledge – just a general love of vegetables and earth. I am excited to work on it though, and to see it take shape. I really want to plant all my seeds right now in the trays we got, but I am going to hold off until after we get back from vacation.

All I want to do these days is read, garden, cook, work in Ethno, and see my lovely Museology friends. I keep reminding myself that in two months, my life will hopefully look a lot more like this, without the nagging feeling of all the other things I should be doing. In any case, I’m glad for our day of gardening today.