HOW MY GARDEN ALL BEGAN

Last year I started a project that I had been tossing around for years. The tossing was due mostly to courage (or lack of) and a fear of failing. My history with "new ideas" is not that promising. I tend to be overly exuberant at first - which I think of as the honeymoon faze - and then as the hard work sets in I find that the thrill is over and I get that 7 year itch (sometimes within days of returning from the honeymoon).

My husband is a good, kind and patient man and he has seen me through some real doozies. Like the time he went out of town and I decided to take down 1/2 the kitchen cabinets (I watch too much HGTV) or the summer I recruited our then 11 year old to help me renovate our 90 year old basement. Each and every time my man comes (visually I like to think of him galloping in on a white horse) to grabs my hand and rescue me from my seemingly endless mess.

Each and every "mess" is totally self inflicted - So, when I wanted to turn our unusable clay tennis court into a garden I didn't think I had enough life lines left to ask him to come on board. But as I have already mentioned he is a really great man and with out even reminding me of past ventures that went awry we began digging our garden last spring.

This blog is about all the lessons I have learned, failures I sure didn't expect, and the amazing amounts of joy my garden as allowed me to experience.

My garden in April: From my bedroom window

SPRING HAS SPRUNG!

It is spring finally here in Iowa. I know this not just because it is the beginning of April but by the singing of the birds and the small buds forming on the trees. I have waited - not so patiently I must confess for the heavy layers of snow to melt away so I can get a glimpse of my garden that I started last year. This being the first winter for my plantings I must admit to being more than a little concerned for their safety - the snow fall was brutal this year and made worse by the layers of ice that seemed to proceed every significant pounding of snow.

I am so happy to report that my boxwood are beautiful and my losses (4 bushes) are minimum. I will happily take those few causalities since I am fairly certain they are more from the drainage issues of last summer than the brutality of the winter storms. But my successes don't stop there: my strawberries plants are alive and without uncovering them from their protective blanket of straw prematurely I think they look amazing! I am so impressed by their ability to weather the harshness of the winter. They seem so fragile out there, where everything else is brown and bleak they are showing vibrant shades of green.

Year two is going to be exciting!!!