My Garden Experiment

With our new house came three raised beds, requested by me thinking how charming it would be to pick tomatoes straight from the vine for dinner salads.

What didn't factor into the picture was how miserable I was at botany in college, with my roommate having to grow my plant for me: The one requirement for passing our lab.

But here I am - after recruiting help from several friends (and their kids!) - trying to grow a garden with tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, corn, and green beans. The more I plant, the better chance I have that something will grow, right?

I'm happy to say that things are sprouting! I didn't anticipate the excitement of watching bits of green shoot out from the dirt.

Whether or not any vegetables grow my first time gardening, the process has been exciting - reminding me that yielding fruit in our own lives is a process too.

Though we plan and plant - as the poem relates below - sometimes things are established and sometimes neglected. My hope is that in life, plans wouldn't overpower the importance of daily watering and care. Sometimes in wanting things to operate on our personal timetables, we miss opportunities for watering, development, and growth.

Time
Mary Ursula Bethell

‘Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,
‘The plant, when established’…
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden!
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive—

Those that come after me will gather these roses,
And watch, as I do now, the white wistaria
Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.

Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,
Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder
At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,
And say, ‘One might build here, the view is glorious; 

This must have been a pretty garden once.’