J.Rhett Lively

If there is one thing that I wish I would have paid more attention to growing up, and there are MANY things on this list, it would be the lessons on gardening and self-sufficiency.   My Mammaw had a beautiful garden until the day she died, my Papaw had a large garden for as long as he could keep up with it. Both of them tried to teach me about the gardens, but I saw that as an inconvenient hassle when the store already had all those things on the shelf.

If only I would’ve known the inflation that would come, how often those convinces would either be unsafe or simply unattainable in the current state of the world. But no, we had everything back then, noth8ng was out of reach, nothing was going to ruin the perfect little bubble we lived in.

Until it did.  And here I am in the worst possible place to try and raise anything to support our family both because of the environment and because of the local laws yet each and every day I see how great a mistake was made ignoring and forgetting those skills.

So, I’ve played with having a garden in the past.  Mostly hidden in a space in my backyard that often gets torn up by the dogs and is too hot due to the sun interacting with the brick on our home to do anything meaningful with.  At this house, I’ve also kept things at a minimum due to living in an HOA and not wanting to fight that battle. 

But with the cost of things and how things are going right now, I just don’t care anymore.  I’ve decided to start transforming our lawn back into a garden and this past winter began expanding the flower bed out front to do just that.  I currently have several winter veggies in that bed that are doing well, despite the soil being worthless right now.  As spring approaches, I plan to bring in some compost to add to the soil and I have several tomatoes, peppers, and other things started here on the desk beside me to place out in that be and a few others I still plan to create this year. 

While I’m having to teach myself many of these skills, my goal is to start producing enough produce to can many of the vegetables we use through the year.  This is a journey that I plan to share, both the good and the bad, as the year progresses.  Will my garden ever look as good at the AI picture I chose for this post?  Probably not, but it will be a labor of love that I’m looking forward to and could only hope my children understand and follow the example I’m trying to set now that I’ve learned the hard lesson of life.