Sarah Mae Keeps Busy

I feel like the last two months have been nothing short of a struggle to keep up. No getting ahead. No catching up. Not even reaching the surface for air. Every day it just feels like things get messier and more out of control.

Right now I am supposed to be writing about this years garden plans, but all I can do is look at the playpen in front of me blocking the path to my bedroom and making my living room a complete mess. It was an incomplete mess before, multiple blankets, 3 or 4 dolls, baby toys, clothes, and those magnetic building shapes strewn about. But with the cockeyed playpen sitting in the one cleared spot on the carpet the mess has become complete. The only thing that could add to this vibe is if I were still wearing my pajamas. (I don’t do that anymore if I can help it though.)

Okay, focus. Now that that’s out of my system lets talk about gardening. *happy dance* First of all let me sing you the praises of weed block fabric. It’s glorious. Second let me tell you when to use it: right away. When we first moved it and I was building my garden beds I had this idea that I could do everything for our soil and weed management for free. We saved all the cardboard boxes. We got free woodchips from trees our neighbors cut down. We reused bricks to make cool boarders around the flowerbeds. I was attempting to go full Eden’s Garden style and never have to pull a weed, just like Paul Gautschi.

Well it didn’t work. I am pretty sure he has been gardening for as long as, if not longer than, I have been alive – so he may have something on me there. Also he has been working the same plot of beautiful land for a very long time. I am in my 6th(?) year of truly attempting to garden and going on my 3rd year in a new area. I can’t say I’ve learned anything but for some reason I am trying again.

The plan for the vegetable garden this year is simple: put down weed block fabric, make simple rows, preserve some food. It won’t be super easy because I have to undo some of the work we did last spring, but maybe I’ll finally be laying a foundation for easier years to follow. That would be nice.

The flower beds are probably going to be the hardest. I will be overhauling the flowerbed in front of the living room window. I pulled out a rose bush and will be moving nearly everything around to create a sport of potager / kitchen garden look. Flowers and kitchen herbs all together. The other front flower bed will be filled with more perennial type flowering shrubs like camellia and hydrangeas. It also has to be overhauled, but it won’t require as much detail work since it will be filled in with shrubs.

The fun thing will be building the southside flowerbed. This is the flowerbed that I will be able to start off the right way. Weed block fabric. Soil amendments. An actual plan. All these things will come together to form a super bed! We are finally building some greenhouse boxes that I will use to start seeds in and I am so excited about them. We found these old windows in the barn on our property that will be perfect to build small greenhouses with. My plan is for my husband to assemble 4 of them. We’ll line them up in the southside flowerbed and fill in between the boxes with late spring and summer flowers like cosmos and zinnias.

2021 will be different than the last two years. 2020 I had a newborn baby as I was trying to get things off the ground, and 2019 I was pregnant and m i s e r a b l e. This year I think it will be a lot easier to get out into the garden. I have so much idealistic new year new me inspiration swimming in my head that I think I can tackle anything. Let’s see where we are in August. Haha!