“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” -Aristotle-

We all make excuses for doing or not doing.

For the longest time, my excuse for not starting a garden was "I don't know how".

I've walked the rows of perfect flowering, fruitful gardens and messy, imperfect, disorganized gardens with complete envy, wishing I knew even one thing about starting.  My green thumb is - nonexistent.  The only plant I've kept alive is the one my grandmother swore I couldn't kill that has been in the family for generations, and whatever that plant is - it can apparently go through a year of not being watered, and also overwatering, and ZERO sun.  It's just - resilient.

We started clearing the ivy out of the backyard and after raking and mowing we were left with brown exposed vines.  Ripping them out of the soil has been so enjoyable, feeling the dirt give, the lines of the vines curving through the earth in surprising ways, snapping at bases, rooting down every few inches.  I want to kill things, I thought.  I'm better at killing things.

So when our neighbors asked if we wanted to split a huge seed order from an heirloom store for barely any money, I impulsively said yes for unknown reasons, and tried to silence the voice that said, "You don't know how".  This garden was stuck in my mind.  I asked truck owners if we could borrow their vehicles, I perused internet prices of aluminum siding as Colt reminded me that we didn't really need that stuff.  We could just "throw down some hay" as he put it.

The truth is, my garden wasn't ever going to look that way, even if I bought all those materials and followed those directions.  I don't think that's how it works.  Gardens are as unique as their gardeners, since it's their hands that sculpt and build and sow.

My friend had some spare packing crates and parted with them for free.  They were dropped off in our backyard before I had time to wrap my head around the change.

The weed-blocker was  a whopping $10.

Colt had to literally teach me how to sand down the sharp edges.....

And once there's dirt and plants, I think it will look like our garden, the one that came to us without much work, from the nudging of our neighbors or our friend's spare parts.  I cultivated some soil from our one garden-boxed tomato plant from last year and started some seeds inside, and we'll just see what grows.  Something will grow.  Something will be resilient and not care that I don't know how, because I'm learning and the only way to learn is to do - to forget that you don't know how and set aside expectations and just learn and fail and succeed and do.



As an aside: I've been loving our dailies.  I'm not loving how they're clogging my blog.  I'm going to continue posting them at aproprose and you can continue to see them here by clicking on the DAILIES tab.  (Note:  Colt and I meet tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow!)