The Gardener Wannabe

And so begins the gardening season

I have so much hope for this vertical garden I scored on Buy Nothing!

Last week while my kiddo was at Taekwondo, I was killing time by working at a bar nearby. I overheard one of the restaurant staff bring up gardening to his colleague. After they said he could cut out early, he proceeded to say, “That’s great because he still had yard work to do.” He said this with a tone that implied, “Ask me more questions.” One of the bartenders took the bait and said, “Oh yeah, what do you need to do?” 

“Well, I have four garden beds, so I’m just tilling tilling tilling,” he responded with a smile, “I’m so sore from all that tilling.” At this point, the bartender got distracted by another customer. But the guy engaged with the regular next to me and proceeded to tell him what he meant to plant. And ended with “gardening, amiright!”

This was charming bar chatter, no matter that the others engaged in conversation with gardening-man weren’t as interested. It was an example of the two subsets of people in the world: the gardeners and everyone else. The gardeners see those first, rainless days as an opportunity to be outside tilling and raking and prepping and planning what will go into the ground. They get energy and satisfaction from the sun and the dirt under their fingernails and end-of-day tight muscles.

Of course, I’m just guessing about this energy and satisfaction, because I am not that person. I am the second in the subset. I like the idea of gardening. I’m happy to spend an hour max outside working in the dirt. But that’s typically my threshold. The people who feel relaxed out in the garden baffle me. My mother is one of those people, and the fact that I don’t get energy being outside in the dirt baffles her. She raised me, so I think a part of her feels like she failed just a little bit when she didn’t pass on her love of gardening to her eldest daughter.

But my father also raised me, and he is with me. He wants no part in the garden. He’s happy–kind of–to help set up the sprinkler system and fix it when it all breaks down, but that’s where it ends. The difference between me and him is that I do not want any part in the sprinkler system set up, either. He’s handy and I’m not (another apocalypse conundrum).

That is all to say that gardening season has begun here in Oregon. And for anyone who has been following this journey, particularly on Instagram, gardening is my white whale. It is one of the apocalypse-prepping skills I want to master the most. But it’s the one that feels just out of reach. For my part, last year wasn’t too bad. I had some failures, but I succeeded in one of the areas that I typically fail in the past: I remembered to water the plants. Seems simple, but what usually happens is I get excited to put stuff in the ground, then the rain in Oregon does the watering for me for a few weeks. After the rain stops, though, I forget it’s now my job to keep the plants watered. Knowing this was my biggest fault, I worked extra hard to not fail on that front last year. And succeeded.

And so for this year, I vowed to be a bit more intentional about planning the garden. Last year, I did what I always do. I realized it was way late in the gardening season, took a panic trip to the garden store, bought anything that seemed like I’d eat it regularly, and then planted them too close together because I didn’t want to waste any of the seedlings. This resulted in some tiny, bitter carrots and radishes that had no space to grow. 

This year will be different, I thought. But then time continued to pass, as it does, and we got to last week. I had not done a damn thing with the garden. No prepping or tilling or planning. Hearing gardener-man at the bar reminded me of my lack of planning. And so did the freakishly warm weather. This left me in a panic that I was way behind. But then I consulted this handy vegetable planter guide which notes the last frost is usually late April. I’m not late. I’m on time. It’s okay, I said breathlessly to myself. Of course, a gardener would know this. Yet I’m a mere gardener-wannabe.

But, last week’s warm weather called the backyard to my attention. And so did my son’s school’s plant sale deadline. And so did my fortunate acquisition of a vertical garden from Buy Nothing (I think my pleas of “I’m desperately trying to become a better gardener, so please consider me” boded well for me). So in the past few days, I have done more to plan out my garden than I think I ever have before. I know where I’m going to put the plants. And the bonus is my growing space has at least doubled with the vertical garden.

I have yet to prepare the beds. But the plant sale plants won’t be here for a couple of weeks, so there’s time. Rest assured, though, I will be doing that all last minute. But it will happen. And the garden will be awesome. I can’t promise that by the end of this growing season, I will graduate from wannabe to gardener. But things are looking up.

And with that, let the gardening season commence.