"the spirit is a garden..."

behold!
our container gardens have finally come together.
building these and planting made for one of my most favorite
saturday afternoons of all time!

we got the wood from a friend...
it was gathering mold and silver-fish
in a dark corner of his backyard.
hooray for free wood! hooray for re-used wood!

i am so grateful that ceej is so very handy...
he whipped these boxes up in no time.
which is a very good thing, you see,
i am not a patient person,
and when i get an idea in my head
i want it done now. not tomorrow or next week. now.
and ceej delivered in an afternoon.

we bought our plants that morning from a vendor
at the davis, ca farmers market.
talk about the thrill and adrenaline of shopping...i've never been
so excited to buy anything as i was to buy
something that i can nurture and watch grow,
and will then give back in a bountiful harvest.

i demanded, like a three-year-old, that i do the digging in the dirt.
i would not let ceej touch the dirt.
{okay, well, i let him help just a little...but this is my dirt...feeling just like a three-year-old indeed}

we planted five tomato plants, all organic:
amish paste {heirloom}
italian heirloom {heirloom, of course}
nyagous {heirloom and dark purple!}
and two standard big beef tomatoes.
mmmmmmm!

we followed my mom's advice and put the cages on now,
before the plants get too overgrown and caging them in
would be too rodeo-like.



we also planted:
three red-leaf lettuce,
two kale,
a plato zucchini,
one parsley,
two basil{s},
one chive{s}.
all of this added to our rosemary and thyme.

we are so very in love with our garden...
we check it every moment and make comments like,
"the leaves on the basil look bigger already,"
"oh good, it's raining! our garden loves rain!"
"oh good, it's sunny! our garden needs the sun!"
"do you think it will get too cold tonight?"

on sunday we took a long walk in the rain.
when we came back to our garden
we found two worms nearby on the sidewalk...
so we added them to our dirt:
adam and eve.
{by the way, we know nothing of worm biology or reproduction...yet}.

i thought this passage from les miserables was oh so appropriate:
sometimes he would dig in his garden,
and sometimes he would read and write.
he had only one name for these two kinds of work:
gardening.
"the spirit is a garden," he said.

i work.
i garden:
in the dirt, in a book, on pages.