Growing


Sometimes I feel like my life is identical to the life I led as an adolescent.  It is difficult to separate yourself from the person that you once were when growing up.  4 to 34, what is the difference in your  mind. You don't feel yourself getting older.  Sure, you realize your changes.  You physically grow older and have gained a year more worth of experience, knowledge.  But, still, you are you.  You are the same person of those memories that fill your adolescences.  You are and feel very much the same.  We do not feel the changes as they are being made.  We sometimes don't ever see them.  Other times, we notice the way we have grown toward this part of our being, and other times how we might grow more toward another.

If I were to look back to the child I was and the woman that I am, I don't think I would have been able to tell you my exact path.  However, as I have grown, I have stuck with my interests.  I have always adored being outdoors, admired my Grandpa and Grandma's garden, enjoyed my Mom's landscaping and loved being surrounded by animals.  I have always enjoyed watching things grow.

Until I moved to my current home, I had only grown one garden in my past.  Like all adventures, it was a learning experience.  My garden  was a very small, but I enjoyed some of my favorite vegetables out of the garden.  I grew carrots, and okra, green beans and tomatoes.  I also realized how such a small space can take so much time to keep weeded and healthy.

After Joshua and I moved down to our current location, we started making plans for a garden.  We moved in to late to start a garden during our first year, but our first spring we planted our first big garden.  We had our flaws.  We over did the vine plants.  We had more pumpkin, zucchini and yellow squash than any one could ask for, lesson learned.  I love squash and zucchini, but not that much.  We did have a great garden.  It was amazing watching the garden grow from small seeds to productive plants.

Second and third year we began to figure out what we wanted in the garden and what grew best in our soil.  It hasn't been until this year, that we have not only designed a wonderful space for growing plants, but we are keeping down on the weeding.  We also have my Mom who has volunteered, to come down and teach us how to can when our green beans fruit.  Very excited.  This will be a huge growing experience for us in our garden.  Not just enjoying and eating as veggies come to fruit, but saving and eating into winter.

I have a great appreciation for our garden.  It is gratifying to watch plants grow from a small seed into a mature plant in a year with the garden annuals and perhaps even more gratifying to watch the blueberries and herbs and mints spread and grow into established plants.  We have some of the largest blueberries I have seen around the county.  Joshua is very active in keeping the proper ph of the soil and maintaining nutrients with all of our plants, via organic fertilizing.  

Did I ever think that I would have such a large garden as a little girl? The answer, I am not really sure.  I always admired my grandparents and their homesteading.  Many of the vegetables on their table during the year was from their garden.  They were and still are very sustainable. Their garden is still quite a bit larger than my own. I may not in my youth have understood the meaning of this as much as I do as an adult, but I still appreciated what they were doing.

Perhaps, it is like aging.  I knew as a youth that I wanted to farm, but didn't quite understand what it meant.  I feel that I was the same little girl with the same interests, but knowledge has led me deeper into my practices. Growing is important.  Not just physically and mentally within ourselves, but it is very healing to grow your own food.  It is pleasurable to watch and delicious to eat.  Growing is natural for us all.  Joshua and I still have a lot to learn to make our little farm productive and profitable, but we will enjoy the trials and tribulations of learning. We still have and look forward to all the growing to come.