life’s a garden, dig it.

This summer I embarked upon a new hands-on  adventure: a vegetable garden.  In planning, I envisioned a peaceful way of spending time outside in the sun, breathing and relaxing as I dig my hands into the soil.   After my first year of Ph.D. school I figured a needed an activity like this.

I prepped the garden bed with  fresh soil and coffee grounds, courtesy of my work.   I planted zucchini, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, and snow peas from seed.  I also bought a couple of strawberry plants, some lettuce plants, cauliflower, a little basil plant,  rosemary, and lavender.  The state of things upon first planting:

The peas I planted only a few weeks before and they exploded!  Along with them I scattered about wildflower seeds.

Everything was moving along nicely until my friend, mr.  groundhog, who lives in the backyard, decided to help himself.   He ate most of the lettuce (both what I planted from seed and the plants I put in), in some of the barely sprouting carrot tops.  I’ve heard of the impossibility of keeping these little guys away, but my garden netting fence has done the trick so far.

My garden as of today:

I can’t say it’s been  entirely relaxing.  Each groundhog sighting and weather warning comes with a bit of anxiety, worrying about a loss of all the time put into this little project.  But eating my first pea straight from the vine was wholly satisfying and assures me this summer experiment is well worth it.

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