The Garden

When we bought the house, it had an awesome boat landing on the side, accessible via a pretty awesome big, fancy gate.  I held on hope that a boat would magically appear while we were sleeping.  I wished on falling stars and prayed and blew kisses to the universe.  Somehow, it didn’t happen.  I don’t know why.  I did everything you’re supposed to do.  Whatever.

The boat landing was becoming depressing.  We have the gate!  We have the landing!  We have no boat. 

Every day.  No boat.

No boat.

No boat.

No boat.

It was starting to be more than I could take.  So, we tore it all up and planted a garden.  Woohoo!  Now. . . I don’t know if you know, but I’m not known for my green thumb.  In my first house, I had lovely pots of ivy in the kitchen that I managed to kill.  Out of pure shame, I replaced them . . . and they died again.  And again.  When we moved into the house, it had a lovely lawn.  Beautiful!  Green!  Lush!  In 9 months time, I managed to reduce it to a pile of weeds and dirt.  Single handedly. 

I have no business planting a garden.  But, I did it anyway!  Ha ha!  Take that, world!

To be honest, the driving motivation was the pair of shoes I promised myself if the garden got finished on schedule.  Purrrrrrrr.

Anyway, so, we’re 2.5 weeks into this garden, and let me just show you how it’s going.

Just planted (yes, it’s dark. . . we worked on that sucker until it was DONE):

 

Here we are after one week. . . not so easy to photograph, but almost everything was already popping out of the ground already.  Crazy!

 

And, at two weeks. . .

 

 

How crazy is that?!  It’s growing!  I haven’t killed anything!  Wheeeeeeeehooo!

And, just so you sleep a little sweeter tonight, here is my reward for this magnificent garden:

 

 

 

So, off you go now, Internet, to plant your own garden!  There are plenty of things that can still be planted to yield wonderful goodies this year.  Go!  Grow!  And, buy new shoes!

Resurrection

Three reasons to pull this blog back from the dusty abandoned corners of the internet world:

A – Last night, after much fanfare and deliberation, I started the INSANITY workout program. Should you not be aware of INSANITY, I strongly recommend you do a handy dandy little Bing search and see what I’m talking about. Because. . . I can tell you it’s the most ridiculous, hard core, ass kicking workout you’ll ever do, but you’ll just think I’m exaggerating and I’ll get really irritated with you because you don’t even know! It’s intense! Stop judging me until you’ve done it!

Anyway, I sang the praises of P90X via this blog, and I showed you my fat & skinny pictures. . . and I vowed not to ever get that fat again. But, I’m a big, fat liar and so here we are.

(actually, I suffered a really crappy injury the day after Christmas [reason 9,762 for not living somewhere with stupid snow], and was completely out of commission for 3 months. given that my body was accustomed to running several miles every day, the abrupt stop just made me pork up like nobody’s business. moo.)

B – We just planted a garden. I’m not good at keeping things alive. Well, I mean, I have 2 dogs, a cat, and 2 kids. But other than that, I’m not good at keeping things alive. Just a couple of weeks ago, the fish died. Kaput. That’s more my speed.

Anyway, the garden is growing. ?!! And, I can’t even stand having something that miraculous happen in my life without showing it off to people who will likely say things like, “WOW! Great job!”. Oh, also, when I’m bragging about stuff to people, I tend to be more likely to maintain that stuff to avoid the humiliation of telling those people that I’ve failed.

Anyway, growing in our garden are:
tomatoes
cherry tomatoes
green bell peppers
red bell peppers
sunflowers
peas
watermelon
cucumbers
onions
carrots
spinach
romaine lettuce

And, growing elsewhere because I became addicted to growing things as soon as stuff started peeking through the ground:
oregano
basil
cilantro
parsley

And, there are things we plan to plant assuming I can stay motivated enough to get it done:
ornamental gourds
leaks
potatoes
peanuts

C – Possibly the most terrifying prospect to me. . . and probably also the most important. *deep breath* I’m going to delve into our experience as a family created via adoption through the department of child protective services. In light of the recent news coverage of the woman who stuck her adopted 7 year old on a plane to Russia with a note attached expressing that she no longer wished to parent the child as a result of his mental issues and violence. . . and after much internal debate about whether to keep my mouth shut or speak out. . . and with the awesome support of family and friends who have seen us through this process to date. . . I’ll do what I can to try to help people understand what this experience is like – good and bad, and believe me, there are plenty of both.

I haven’t decided yet whether to smash it all together here, or whether to split the topics up (more specifically, whether to launch a new blog dealing with just the adoption issues). But. . . if you’re here, you’ll know where to find everything.

Hi, Ann Foglesong!