A bit of an introduction . . .

The state of things as of 7:00am this morning.

I don't want to give the impression that I have a lot of gardening experience. While I have spent hours, days, weeks, years, squatting in my parents' garden doing manual labour like pulling weeds and picking rocks, I have not actually had the chance to plan and follow through with my own plot.

Two years ago my husband and I bought our first house. While modest, it does have a "great", as in "larger than townhouse", backyard. That's really the reason why we (I) chose the route of detached house, as I can tell you, the joys of owning a 800 sqaure foot house built in 1948 are extremely limited.

It was last summer that my husband and I, with the help of our son, built the raised garden beds illustrated in the above picture. (That in itself was quite the ordeal, but I'll save that for a later post.) But we didn't finish until July(?) and so it was already late in the season and we didn't get much going on except for some lettuces and basil that I bought as seedlings.

I guess I should stop saying "we" because while my husband is awesome and supportive and does whatever I ask of him, he is not into the whole gardening thing, and he has made it very clear in his own subtle way that the fewer truckloads of dirt dumped on our driveway, the better.

Anyways, so this year I want to have an ass kicking crop. I want to taste vegetables like how they taste in my dreams. I want to have such bounty that I have to give it away. I want to have my pantry stuffed with all my canning and pickling and jamming and whatever else you can do with fruits and veg.

So, I've read a lot of books, or, maybe more acurately, looked at a lot of pictures in a lot of books, and taken a course or two (or one), and I think its time to actually do some practical, experiencial stuff. Personally, I find I learn best by doing and while I might not be the fastest learner, hey, this ain't no competition, so who cares?

Now is my opportunity to do my own thing! Cool. Well, lets get started!  . . . um . . . tomorrow.

I'd also like to thank you for joining me. We can garden together! I'm happy to have to you along for the ride and I appreciate all comments and input . . . except of course if they are mean comments and input. But you are obviously lovely, so this would not apply to you.

For my part, I'm going to try to write posts that are honest and entertaining, and definately not preachy. I hate preachy! I don't really forsee myself having the patience or expertise to write instructions on how to do various gardening things, so I'll probably just be linking you up with information that will hopefully be useful.

I'm going to practice organic gardening in the most basic sense of the word, which, we can talk about later. I also reserve the right to swear when I feel like it, but I don't have the dirtiest mouth around so things should be kept pretty respectable. Therefore, poisonous garden - no, poisonous language - maybe.

Well, have a wonderful day! It is Friday after all. I'll be back tomorrow with something interesting to say about compost or maybe something else. You'll just have to come back and see for yourself!

And, yeah, the dog does eat the compost. All. The. Time.

Gross!