This journey has been a long and rewarding one for me, and as with all journeys is still a work in progress. I still feel a bit intimidated by peoples’ posts of their perfect produce and perfect lush gardens. Sure I can find a good looking bit and photograph it but in truth my garden fluctuates wildly with the seasons and also with the time I am able to devote to it.
I just let the chickens run over a most disappointing row of winter radishes to give them some fresh greens. I was feeling a bit bummed about this especially because we are buying lovely bunches of organic radishes from the Deans bush farmer’s market here in Christchurch. But then I went and picked some lovely herbs, a few leaves of Spinach and rocket and thought that things would probably still be alright.
With two young boys one just starting school and one putting out his two year old molars it is OK if my garden isn’t perfect and only has a few bits and pieces that I can harvest. All this reminded me of why we are building our planting guide and why we are making it easy and simple.
To give ourselves a good chance we need to see that gardening is as much about the moments as much as the produce.
My favourite and proudest moment of the last year in my garden was watching my oldest son Moss poking holes in the soil with the dibbler and my young 1.5 year old Fenn following him planting seeds in the holes. I’m not sure what they were planting or why they chose that spot but my helper who pointed it out said “aren’t young boys supposed to be beating each other up not planting seeds?” Too good…
So get out to the garden just to be there and see where it takes you.