Some Battles are Meant to be Fought Alone

When we started the ground garden I was intent on doing all the work myself. I had been growing plants, flowers and vegetables for over ten years before now. It started when I lived in a small apartment by myself. I had recently come out of a very undesirable relationship. So, a coworker made me a custom stainless steel raised garden, like no other. It was priceless! I had expressed interest in growing a garden, but I only had a tiny yard around my place. It was an old garage turned into a two story apartment. The raised garden was beautiful. Solid and sturdy.

I placed the raised garden inside my tiny fenced-in backyard. This was the first year I had tried to grow vegetables. I wanted to grow everything! I planted a line of okra in the middle. Beets on the side. A few yellow squash plants, tomatoes, lettuce and I am pretty sure I threw one of everything in there. I could look outside my living room window down onto the raised garden. It took off! Everything in it grew very well. There were squash plants hanging all down the side. Tomato plants grew taller than the fence. It was spectacular.

I will never forget harvesting that first squash and tomato. It was so satisfying. I was dealing with a lot of things at the time and here was something that was all mine. I had planted them. Watered them. Cared for them. And, they gave back to me. It was so special to me that I was hooked. Finally there was something in my life that was all mine. Nobody could stop me from growing my own vegetables. It wasn’t up to anybody else whether or not I had fresh vegetables. It was all mine and I was in control. After that, I started planting every flower I could get ahold of in pots all around the porch and yard. I was hooked.

I moved several times after that for work and the only thing I made sure that came with me was this beast of a raised garden. Not just the garden, the soil too! Black gold they call it. It was like this soil was blessed. Full of magic. There were many people who helped me shovel that dirt through this years. I had never known anything in my life to make such a positive impact on me. Although, at the time I really didn’t realize it.

Every year I grew different vegetables. I wanted to simply see how they grew differently. Learning how the plants grew, the care they needed and everything involved was my goal. Not everything did well. Looking back I realize now some things just need more space. I had tried to cram too many plants in a small space, although they did all grow. It was alright that not everything grew perfectly because it was all a learning experience. I was gaining knowledge each year from trial and error. Whatever I was able to harvest was simply a bonus. There was nobody judging it. There were no rules. It was whatever I wanted to do.

Ten years later Michael and I began remodeling his house. I had many doubts about living out here. I was unsure about if this was where I needed to be. At the time, I was growing so many plants in pots in my small backyard, due to the red clay dirt. I had every kind of size pot out there full of something. Potatoes, flowers, snow peas and the list went on and on.

Well, the first year we started working on the house I let my existing gardens go. I wasn’t there to care for them. Everything died. I was ok with it too. We were working on something for the future and I was too tired to worry about any of it. Except the snow peas. They must have gotten the perfect amount of rain. They grew straight up the center of the raised garden. I went out there and put a few poles next to them and tied them up. They produced a few snow peas. It showed me how resilient nature is. Even without my help they thrived. I mean, I point blank abandoned them and they lived.

I spent weeks painting the walls in this house. We did a primer coat, even though the paint has primer. Being new sheet rock we wanted to seal it in as best as we could. I spent many a day out by the well house washing out brushes and trays. Some days, I have to admit, the brushes were left in the tray. Note to self: don’t do that! Getting dried paint out of a brush is virtually impossible. You can try. What you will end up with is a bunch of paint balls stuck to bristles and then try to paint with that! It will leave lines all over your walls that you can’t fix. These days were the extra trips to the hardware store for more brushes.

While I stood out here on the property I began to picture a large ground garden. Right in the corner of the back field. I would walk out there and just stand there looking back at the house. The house with a half built porch and construction debris all over the place. It was so peaceful up there. The view was across the entire property. You could see the edge of the lake across the street. The land looked like it all started from this spot. It was so private and peaceful.

After that I couldn’t stop thinking about the garden. We were installing the kitchen sink one day and I stood there looking out through the new French doors, which I still need to paint, and the view led right to that spot. I imagined washing dishes and watching the garden grow. It was like the garden was already there, even when it wasn’t. The vision began to be clear. We would build a huge ground garden on the top of the hill.

In my down time I began sketching out the entire yard, chicken coop included. There was so much potential on this property. Five acres is a lot of space to work with. We had so much work to do on the house, however, this gave me something to dream about while I painted. Dream about bringing in those fresh vegetables into the new kitchen. Dream about going out to the garden every day and seeing what was growing. I imagined throwing the chickens the extra harvest. A whole world was beginning to come to life in front of me.

The first year we lived here we broke ground for the garden. Michael was so excited because a garden had never been grown here. The ground had never been touched. It was like digging in a mine, like we found gold. You never know what you will find in the dirt. We found bottle caps, coins, rocks and trash. But, we cleared it all out and dug out the garden. We both said we thought this dirt would grow well. It just seemed rich in color already.

We weren’t really sure how large we wanted the garden to be. We had just bought Bernice, our tractor, so we had the ability to make a large space. As we dug and moved the dirt the garden grew larger and larger. Michael began designing the layout with rows and mounds in mind. It seemed practical due to the slight incline the area had. The extra rain water would run off the mounds and run down the property rather than sit in the garden. But the mounds would absorb extra moisture from the trenches between when they needed to. The garden was designed.

I had never had anybody show interest in my gardening before. Michael never had expressed much interest before, although he was fascinated with having fresh vegetables from the garden to cook. The last year we lived at my house we had fresh lettuce all summer. The lettuce really grew well in the raised garden. He was gone a lot for work and never really took the time to get involved. It was something I did on my own.

The first year of the garden he did much of the hard labor and I planted the entire garden. Although, I do enjoy some of the tractor work. It took me many days to get all the seeds down. I had usually grown by plants in the past. In the last garden I had grown, the only thing I had used seeds for were those miraculous snow peas. Maybe that was a sign! It was really fascinating though to see a plant grow from a tiny seed. This garden was going to be all seeds. So the hunt began for all vegetable seeds. And, we had a ginormous space to plant them!

I never even had time to decide if moving out here was what I wanted. The garden took over my life. All of my spare time was spent in the garden. Not just me, all of Michael’s spare time began to be in the garden. He could not believe in just a few days what a difference everything would be. It was like magic. He became as much about the garden as I was. If not more! Our favorite times were in the evening when the sun was going down or early in the morning when the morning light hit the dew on the plants. They would actually wave and shake the dew off. Steam would come off the dirt as they prepared for the hot sun every day. I loved riding down to the store and seeing everyone else’s fields of corn growing and gardens grow, too.

Then came all of the pollinators. You can imagine a few bees and butterflies when you have a couple plants. Imagine having a fifty foot garden full of potential plants needing pollinating. Plus, flowers made to attract them. It was a show! They came from everywhere into the garden. Butterflies of all kinds, bees, wasps, dragonflies and of course caterpillars and unwanted pests. We had a front row seat. They were all ok with our presence. There was an understanding that we were all here for the same reason. People talk about mutual ecosystems, well we were in the center of the entire presentation. It seemed they knew we had a hand in creating it.

You can’t help but wonder how there isn’t any world beyond ours. Did God and Mother Nature lend a hand? Is it possible that the garden had help beyond my small hands. Days I was overwhelmed with the work, the work seemed to work itself out. It reminded me of the Bible story of the last supper and how the bread seemed to feed everyone. Was it one loaf that did that? It was always hard to believed. However, I began to see a similarity with how the one plant did do this. From the tiny seed. Maybe, just maybe, there is some truth to it all.

As we are planting the garden this second year, I feel more confident. Not just in my garden skills, because Lord knows I need more of those. But also in general. Something tells me I got this. Whatever doubts I may have had before in my skills, myself or my future seem to have faded away. It didn’t happen overnight, but as time went on it all quickly became a thing of the past. I had given myself a purpose outside of the life I had known. We were now a part of something greater. We were participants in the entire performance. I knew now I wasn’t in charge of this gig. I was lucky to just be here and be a part of it all. It was all larger than life.

It took me a while to learn to share the experience. What had been my own for all those years I now was sharing with the person I loved more than anyone. Watching his face full of excitement gave me more happiness than my own. Especially when the ladybugs showed up! That was something. It began to take over our conversations, after work talk of course. Then it would be all about what happened in the garden today. What was doing well, what was having issues, the challenges and the accomplishments. I cannot remember what we even used to talk about. However, at the end of the day when we tiredly went to sleep, we both knew the garden would be there tomorrow. The dishes may still need to be done, but that was alright. The one thing we knew was we couldn’t wait to see what happened next in the garden!

Now, we are right in the middle of planting the second season. All of the cold weather seeds are put down. The rain has come for a few days and as the garden dries up I can’t wait to see those snow peas reaching out for the new trellis hoop we built. They must have grown twice the size in just a couple days. The raspberry and blackberry bushes we planted last year are starting to make berries. We will build stakes for them, very soon. The apple tree has a ton of new growth and is getting taller. The plum tree looks very healthy. The ginormous fig tree is also starting to show green leaves. I am looking to sell figs to bakeries as there is too many to go to waste. I can only make so much jam!

Thank you for stopping by and reading this post! Check out Rainy Day Deals for garden products we love. We recently just started documenting this years garden on YouTube. Why Not! Check it out and follow along. We are happy to be here and share our journey with you. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.