Garden Lessons

I planted some flowers today. It was great. Every year since Jay and I got married Zach and I have planted a little garden. I thought it would be a fun thing to do together. Zach always seems really into it until it comes to the actual work part. It has always seemed like a fun idea and I'm really excited to do it. Until we start. Then it seems more like a chore than anything else. This year it hasn't really seemed to work well timing wise. Any time we have together Ryan is around. Since we would plant in the front yard and Ryan likes to run toward the street this doesn't work well. Jay and Zach picked out some flowers this weekend. They didn't seem to be doing well, so I planted them today during Ryan's nap. ALONE! It was fabulous. I went out there thinking it would be like a chore and ended up enjoying myself. I've learned a few things about gardening that work for me. This is the latest one. Gardening alone can be peaceful, stress relieving(all that digging and hacking at weeds is cathartic) and a good time to think. Planting flowers is way better than planting seeds. I like the immediate satisfaction of having something beautiful to show for my efforts. I started out planting seeds and it was okay. It was fun to watch them grow, but I thought it would be a lot more satisfying to start from scratch than it was. Seeing the beauty right away is very satisfying to me. Another lesson I learned this year is to pick out the flowers myself OR give very specific instructions. Jay and Zach came home with 4 flowers. None were the same. 3 were similar, but different colors. This I can work with although I don't find it ideal. One was completely different. It's just one little lonely purple flower. There was one tag to tell me what sort of light, etc needed. Guess which one had the tag. Yep, that's right, the lonely purple flower. It needs full sun, there is really no place in our garden to plant a flower that needs full sun. Well, I did the best I could. Hopefully they will live for a while and people won't notice the awkwardness of the garden because the flowers really are very pretty individually. I guess when you tell a 6 year old who doesn't like to hurt anyone(or anything's) feelings you end up getting a little of everything. Variety is the spice of life, right. Well, it's the theme of our garden anyway. Another very important thing I learned this year is when your husband hooks some fancy contraption to the hose to make your life easier make sure it’s not cracked before you use the hose for the first time in spring. Otherwise you might get soaked. Luckily, since I had such a nice time gardening I was able to laugh at myself. Overall this year’s gardening experience was rather nice. I think I will perhaps pursue it further in the future.