I have had a song running through my head of the many counsels from President Kimball. I can remember the tune quite well, but not all the words. All I remember is "plant a garden, keep a journal . . . be a missionary . . . " This song keeps coming back to my mind. Perhaps since this is all that I can remember, these are the 3 things the Lord would have me work on. So, I'm taking them one at a time.
Since January I have felt strongly that I wanted to have a garden this year. Now let me say, I know little, NOTHING about gardening! We talked about where would be a good place to plant. We really don't have a good spot in our yard. Almost our entire yard is shaded all day by either our own home, or the home behind us. Like I said, I know little, NOTHING, but I am pretty sure plants need sun.
A couple months later it was announced that our stake was going to take land adjacent to our chapel and divide it into family garden plots for anyone that wanted it. YAHOO! An answer to my prayers. I think the Lord had to prepare me for months for the idea, or I never would have given it a second thought when the announcement was made in church.
Because I know little, NOTHING about gardening, I went to the best source I could think of for advice, Bishop Isabell. Those Isabell's know how to garden. In fact, his dad is the Stake Farm director. He gave me two pieces of advice:
1. Set your expectations low - SERIOUSLY! That was his first piece of advice. He said as a first time gardener, I shouldn't expect to be able to have my entire year supply in my garden. Okay, that makes total sense. Keep it simple. Let's do a small garden, enjoy any little bits we get from it, and use this as a year of learning.
2. Use the garden to strengthen the family. WOW! I hadn't even thought of that aspect. He said that he taught his kids some great lessons while working as a family together in the garden.
So, with those two pieces of advise, our garden adventures began. I told that girls that I wanted the garden put in as my Mother's Day gift. So, the Saturday before Mother's Day, we headed out to till and plant our garden. I think we hauled out 5 or 6 wheel barrows of rocks.
In my normal fashion, I totally forgot my camera. However, Rylee saved the day by taking pictures with her phone. I promise she was a helper too, but just behind the camera for a few moments.
So, HOW did I get the full wheelbarrow and Marty get the empty one? In fairness. he took WAY more loads of rocks out than I did, plus he did all the tilling.
We have been going back to check on our little garden several times a week. We have had A LOT of rain over the past few weeks. We have yet to have to water. We went over tonight for a two week visit and we are making progress. We have carrots, beans, peas, several varieties of tomatoes & peppers, cucumbers, watermelon, cantalope, & pumpkins. One of our mounds of watermelons never sprouted, so we went and bought squash today to put there instead. We also decided to add a row of onions because we had a bit of room in one section to do that. They are planted a bit late, but hopefully they will do okay.
Below are pictures of our tiny little plants. We feel so successful already.
I believe this is a picture of our peas:
One of our many tomato plants:
This is hard to see, but these will be carrots: Looks like we'll have some thinning to do.
Can't wait to eat the yummy green beans:
Now this is the funny one:
Now, I know right now it doesn't look too funny, but in October it will. We bought the wrong kind of pumpkin seeds. By this fall, it will look like this:
The package says the pumpkins grow to be 6 feet tall and well over 100 lbs. Of course I discover this AFTER we have planted them. If for some reason our NON-existant gardening skills produce these giant pumpkins, it will make a great backdrop for pictures at the church fall festival!
Our whole family has been excited to work in the garden and are looking forward to eating at least a little bit of what we grow. I hope our enthusiasm keeps strong in July when it's 100 degrees and 98% humidity!
