Since the early July, when Mr. Katie returned from the hospital after his appendix surgery, I have been leaning heavily on fixing our previously neglected raised bed garden as my sanity keeping activity.
Though in all fairness, I still live a pretty relaxing life comparatively. I still take walks and runs and I still visit the YMCA.
Also Mr. Katie is doing great now. The incision is almost healed up and he has been sans wound vac for a few weeks now. Hazahh! I couldn’t be happier.
It’s just that we have been traveling less and we haven’t camped at all yet this summer, which is a change from the past few years. We have been staying close to home so he can recover.
So I decided to take Sheryl Sandberg’s advice and really lean in . . to gardening. Well, actually homemaking. I have also been working on rehoming things in our shed that we no longer use. When that’s done, I am going to move on to rehoming some the items in our basement that we no longer use. I want to give us a house that we can really feel relaxed in. On second thought, domestic adventures are probably not what she had in mind. In fact, they probably the opposite of what she had in mind.
But that’s okay. Work life is fine but home life is important too.
Making our garden functional again is something that I have been wanting to do for a few years now, so this period of staying home has given me the opportunity to really lean in to this project.
Clearing the garden was probably the hardest part. You can see how over run it is with weeds. Before this summer, it had been at least 5 years since we attempted gardening.
The week following July 11th, I got busy adding many bags of raised bed garden soil, since the soil volume in the bed was very low. Then I researched vegetables and herbs that can be started in July in garden in zone 6b. Then I made numerous trips to Lowes to procure my materials. Finally, the family worked together to plant the seeds and pre-sprouted plants.
Many of the plants came up sooner than I expected.
Luckily, the universe answered my call for help. I had already begun to research and get some materials to keep animals our of the garden when my next door neighbor offered her assistance unprompted. I was inside of our house digesting my pancakes when the boys told me that neighbor Lisa wanted to talk to me. She said that she had ideas about how to keep rabbits from eating our garden. Then she gave me chicken wire and helped me install in on the outside of the garden. Then we discussed plan on how to install the deer netting that I already had purchased. After yet another trip to Lowes for wooden stakes, I put up the deer netting yesterday afternoon.
Today I felt very happy when I looked out of my kitchen window at our garden. I can’t believe how how it has come.
Enjoy your gardening Katie! Your plants look like they’re doing great.
Your garden looks great! And also looks like you did a ton of work! Uncle Jim would be proud. We’ve had done issues with deer this year too- we had to put deer netting on our tomatoes and even our sunflowers – they actually came right along our house and ate our hostas. So glad Mr. Katie is feeling better
Good for you! Your garden looks beautiful 🤩 I bet it tastes good, too.