introduction
It’s February in Virginia. If you live here you know that February is the pre-teen month of the year. Awkward, precarious, and at times, unbearable. The groundhog has either seen his shadow or we’re blessed with a cloudy February 2 and it’s announced that spring is just around the corner. Either way, the next few weeks are guaranteed to be cold and well, cold. This is why I’m currently sitting by a roaring fire in our cozy home with plans of making chicken pot pie for dinner. Also on the agenda? Garden planning.
My husband, Adam, and I moved into our first home in December 2016. We were fortunate in that we looked at very few houses before finding our ideal home. There were several things that really sold us on it (a free dog being one of those things - more on that later), but for me, the garden was at the top of the list. Had I ever gardened before? Nope. Should I have cared more about the spaces we would actually be living in? Probably. Thankfully, we both loved the interior space which meant I could get my garden.
We’ve had two summer gardens since moving in. I’ve read more about soil and compost than I ever thought I would and touched more dirt and bugs than I have in my whole life. I’m constantly learning that there’s always something new to learn. My time in the garden has been a nice reminder that life doesn’t have to be perfect to be fruitful and extremely rewarding. Sometimes your cucumbers get eaten by beetles and you have rain every day of the summer that ruins your tomatoes. But then, you realize that growing a plant from seed, getting it into the ground, and having it produce anything is a miracle in itself. So, you celebrate your victories and you learn from your mistakes so that when February rolls around you can laugh and say, “Am I really going to do this all over again?” The answer is yes. Partly because it’s cold and there’s nothing else to do but mostly because it brings you so much joy.
I hope you’ll follow along as I plan for summer 2019. There will certainly be lots of mistakes but hopefully we can laugh at them together and learn along the way.
-cate
