Gardening Mojo

Once upon a time, a family of 5 moved to a brand new house. They had built the house to suit them on a rather ordinary suburban lot. What made the lot exciting was the fact that it backed up against city parkland with trees for climbing, a ravine for exploring and a path for biking and walking. No one would ever build behind the house because the land was not suitable for housing, so all the wonderful trees and natural beauty would always brighten the view from their windows and deck.

Now the Mother was an avid gardener and had all kinds of marvelous plans for the landscaping. For a full year prior to the move, she had poured over gardening magazines, checked out stacks of garden design books from the library and made copious notes and numerous drawings of her plans.

Unfortunately, the family moved into their beautiful new house in January. Not a very promising time to garden in Minnesota, but Mother was not daunted by the cold winds and deep snow. She promptly purchased a grow light and little peat pots and started seedlings in her basement.

Lo and behold, in March, Mother unexpectedly found out that the family of 5 was going to become a family of 6 in October. It was a bit disappointing, because Mother did not have easy pregnancies and spent a lot of time on bed rest in previous pregnancies. So the garden plans had to be amended, with many of the more elaborate plans put on hold. Mother, in her excitement over having a new baby, in addition to the dampening effect of having to wait to finish her garden, lost her gardening mojo. With much help from Father, a small garden was put in, just to grow her seedlings. Then the grow light was put away, the garden plans were filed away and Mother became a mother for the 4th time. She replaced her gardening mojo with a fiber arts mojo and lived happily ever after . . . for awhile.

(The small square in the middle is the original vegetable garden)

Fast forward 7 years - Mother finally found her gardening mojo and started to remake her garden into the one of her dreams. With the help of her much older children, she began to strip out the sod that was placed (against her water conserving, anti-lawn desires) as a "temporary" weed prevention barrier. This enlarged the original vegetable bed significantly.

(The vegetable bed enlarged and the edging of the flowerbeds finalized)

At the same time, she planned out the more flowing flower beds that will surround the garden bed. Eventually, Son#1 will build an arbor, fence and garden gate around the vegetable bed, as part of his homeschool wood shop training. In Mother's imagination, the arbor will be covered with climbing vines and lovely roses and other flowering perennials will envelope the picket fence, making this the garden of her dreams.

(Where we are today)

The vegetable garden's inside edging was placed, the rest of the sod was stripped from the flower beds and the garden was tilled. With a little more (okay, a lot more) hard work, the raised beds will be replaced and filled, the seeds will be planted and the edging will be placed and phase one of Mother's grand and glorious garden will be done.

THEN Mother will live happily ever after . . . until phase 2 of her grand and glorious garden plans begins . . .