I love to garden. Ornatmentals, flowering, vegetable. It really doesn’t matter. We had a beautiful yard in our last home Granted, it was less than a quarter of an acre, so it wasn’t that hard to have a beautiful yard. But, try as I might, I never could get it quite, well, perfect. It was never that Southern Living yard I so desperately wanted to have. Then we moved. Working, an adoption, the death of a mother, volunteer responsibitlities…yada, yada….we never could put the time into this yard that we put into the other.
Until now.
I’m on the countdown to the end of my work commitment, getting ready to homeschool and doing one of the things I love – gardening. We quadrupled the size of the yard in this home which means, for me, striving for perfection is akin to insanity. I’ve known this for a long time but it wasn’t really until I was working in my new vegetable garden last week I had the time and the quiet moments to reflect upon this.
If you had wandered into that backyard during that meditative hour, you would have found me squatting among the rows, thinking of my grandfather who was a sharecropper and wondering how much of him lives in me. I was thinking not only of him but primal nature we all have to dig in the dirt and this movement among all industrialized nations – but especially the U.S. – to create urban homesteads and to reconnect with our food source. Victory gardens (remember your history) are popping up on postage size backyards, on rooftops in large cities, on unclaimed and abandoned lots and here in my own beautiful and less than perfect backyard.
This summer, we will be transforming this space. It may never be perfect, unless it is perfectly wild like nature and like my own nature, but it is a source of great joy for our entire family. Gotta go! Nature is calling.
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