On starting a little garden

My mother is all about better homes and gardens. She is the reason my flower garden is beautiful every year because every year, she comes and adds impatiens, begonias, petunias, or some other bloom to my perennials. I would help her, but I know my limits. As soon as I see anything crawling, I’m over it. This year, just as always, she came with a trunk spread of pretty flowers in early bloom and her gardening gloves, but she had something extra this time. She pulled out a trough planter, gardening soil, pea seeds, a tomato plant, two broccoli plants, and four pepper plants and said, “I want you to start Ash a little garden.” At first, I was not so keen on the idea. The occasional watering of my flower garden are the most of a green thumb I’ve considered myself to have. And that is manageable because it’s only for maybe a season and a half out of the year.

My mother has always had several houseplants. I have never kept a houseplant, ever, save one that I recently acquired last fall from my good friend Dan Lippitt. He gave it to me on one of his last days here in Michigan before moving to Nevada and made me vow to keep it alive. Somehow I have managed to do so, but only because it’s one of those very low maintenance pothos plants that give me a good cue to water it. So again, I really wasn’t so thrilled on the idea of having to tend to a garden, no matter how “little.”

My neighbors directly behind me and next to them, adjacent to me have huge gardens, and every year I watch them put in lots of gardening work. It’s admirable, but I’ve never gotten garden envy to start one in the almost ten years of watching them. That has changed. Thanks to my mother imposing this “little garden” idea on me, I’ve found myself intrigued now. For the past month, it’s actually been satisfying as a family to watch pea seeds sprout and the early buds of unripen green tomatoes. I would say it’s even a little therapeutic. And Ash loves it.

So thanks to my mother I have bigger and better gardening plans for next year. I’ve already marked my spot where cabbage and banana peppers will grow. Our neighbor behind us, a very kind man from Sri Lanka, has enthusiastically offered to help us. I often see his two little boys helping him. Who knew that cultivating food was so…cultivating.

So cheers to starting little gardens! Thanks ma!