Simple Living | Veggie Garden Dreams

I’m still layering on the wool, still walking through knee-deep snow, but my mind is on this summer’s garden.

So here, lately, it’s been pencil, paper, eraser. Ideas, inspiration, lists. Calculations and revisions, revisions, revisions. It’s like sculpting, in a way - add some here, remove some there. Keep going until it starts to look like something. The momentum of the process expanding with the flow, like tributaries joining a river.

It’s a plan for a vegetable garden, that I’ve been working on. Of course, you know I’ve had a veggie garden for years - eight 4x12 foot beds, shoulder to shoulder in a row, dug right into the earth across the lawn behind the house. Every year I planted food. And every year it was a battle with the deer for it. The pair of motion-sensitive sprinklers I staked out like garden guardians worked to keep the deer at bay, except when they didn’t. Whether it was a dead battery, or a smart deer who could stay out of the eye, all it took was opportunity in a single night to lose weeks worth of work and growth to the belly of a critter. Constantly monitoring my safety system was becoming exhausting, the joy of gardening leaking out with the frequent disappointments. Finally, last year, I didn’t even have it in me. I took the season off. To regroup, support the farmer’s market growers, and plant all eight of my beds to flowers.

But, oh, I missed those veggie gardening days! My hands in soil, nurturing life, watching our own food grow, harvesting in the soft, early morning light. I had to figure out a way to garden again, and this time, there would be a fence. Wood and wire, gates and latches, these would be my freedom.

Here is where the plan began. Alongside the top-listed fence were the other most-important things: raised beds, gravel paths, automated watering - the underpinnings of a happy gardening life. Of course, also listed were the dreamy-dreams: a greenhouse, raspberry, blueberry, and asparagus patches, herb borders, espalier fruit trees, grape vines, and strawberry troughs. Then, two more things were jotted down: a wash station, and a garden shed. (because you have to know where you’re going in order to arrive).

Then, I started pulling images. Those delightful things that describe in a glance what you’re trying to say, where you’re trying to go with it all. That’s the look. This is the idea. Here’s the feeling. Collect the photos. Gather a good heap. Then, sort through and pull the good ones, the very best. It’s the good ones that have the spring to leap from with your own interpretation.

I thought you might like to see where my dive is taking me.