Today is the first day of March and with the feeling that it has been a long cold winter, my thoughts turn to spring and the welcome anticipation of what I will plant this year. Last year my tomatoes and peppers did so well that I was encouraged.
My zest for having a garden has always been strong but my experience not so much. Last year was the first time that I had tomatoes and peppers. They were in containers and they were easy enough to look after. The joy of being able to eat tomatoes and peppers that I had grown myself on a city balcony was great, and I will admit to feeling a sense of bliss at being able to share them with others. The look on people’s faces as they asked, “you grew these?” was hilarious.
This spring I will have the bliss of being in The Countryside. I am thrilled by that and of the idea of being able to plant a garden in the ground if I choose and not just have a balcony garden. Of course there are some seasoned country folks who suspect that I won’t like digging or doing manual labour and find it hilarious that I have Big Ideas to cover acres of fields with crops of lavender. I’m not in the business of selling lavender. But like many former city dwellers, I have for some reason always dreamt of having an acre of it planted and then making sachets of dried lavender and selling it at a country farmers market.
In reality, it is not necessarily the fairy-tale experience it would seem and I would probably be more suited to growing it for fun and then photographing or painting it or writing about it than I would trying to sell it. Selling it wouldn’t really be my cup of tea. In actuality I will likely convince myself to buy a few lavender plants instead of planting acres of it.
Maybe I’ll even buy the plants in pots and keep up my success with container gardening, but now in addition to a ground planted garden. Container gardening is certainly a lovely addition to porches or a courtyard near one’s house. My main questions to ponder right now are what will I put in the containers and the ground garden plots? Will I use raised beds and how will I make them? I feel the thrill and excitement of spring being on its way and am enjoying the sheer bliss of thinking about my garden.