Mr. & Mrs. Collins: The Garden

For those who don't know, I love flowers. I love walking in service and admiring the well kept yards. We have several friends in our congregation that love gardening. They have such beautiful yards with lots of colors. And the vegetables are simply delicious. Every time I see a garden, I secretly wish I had the ability to produce such greenery. The thing is, I don't like dirt. Mr. C smiles at me as I type this. He thinks it's "interesting" that I don't like dirt. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I will smile and go with it. Back to the garden and my fear of dirt. I have lots of fears of the outdoors. I fear worms, spiders, pretty much anything that crawls. Still, I really want a garden. We have a small area in our back yard that would be suitable. Our patio is covered by a small deck and a stone area. There is a L-sharped area that would work just fine to bring some warmth and color back there. Honestly anything would be an improvement over th barren wasteland it's been. I've hemed and hawed about starting a garden for about a year now. Quite frankly, I lacked ambition... until now.

I was shopping with my friend Linda this past weekend. Incidentally, Linda was one of the people who told me it was high time we updated this webpage - point taken Ln! She and I went to a nursery on Saturday (the flower kind not the baby kind) I was in love. Can I tell you how nice it was to walk around and admire the plants? I left there with plants, flowers and herbs! How exciting! I got home to show Mr. C my accomplishments and he smiled with approval. He suggested we get a bit more greenery to fill in all the dirt spots. We decided to go back to my new love - the nursery - on Sunday after the meeting. We got more Creeping Jenny's. We also got some small potters for the herbs and the planting soil. Once home, we got to work, well I got to work while Mr. C supervised. He really is the one with the green thumb in this family. But he appreciated I wanted this to be my hobby, so there he was supportive as always .. go head ahhh. Anyhoo, I learned a lot. Mainly that gardening is HARD. Very Hard work! I had no idea my back could ache like that and my knees from being hunched over playing in the dirt. Despite the sweat and dirt and the earthworm who slithered away after I uncovered his hiding place, the garden is taking shape nicely. I still need to do some pruning, but I'm enjoying the progress.

Corner Shot