My First Love

Oh that wonderful feeling. Anticipation. You catch yourself day-dreaming about the next meeting, how you will spend your time together, what new things you'll notice about them, how they feel, smell, look..taste.  They occupy your thoughts, thinking about what has happened in the past and timidly you start thinking about the future, planning, hoping.  You start to get a little embarrassed by how bold your thoughts of the future get to be.  How will they look in 5 years, 10 years..then you stop.  This is absurd. One season at a time. Goodness you barely even have all the beds prepped yet and already you're dreaming of adding trees in the front garden.

Yes, gardening was my first love.  I was completely captured by it.  I fell hook line and sinker.  From the moment I was given a 10 x 10 plot to tend to for a mere 3 months during the summer up to the present moment where I live on 5 acres and can garden as much as I desire.  I live in a climate where gardening is next to impossible and I still love it.  I live at 6400ft altitude in the High Plains of Colorado. It is high and dry and very windy.  I always said I love a good challenge and I got one.

When I was a young girl in grade school our local Botanic Gardens offered a summer program for kids.   They would let you tend to a small garden plot as long as you made your commitment to show up every weekend to water/weed/harvest, whatever was needed.  You could come during the week too, if your school schedule allowed.  Well mine did.  I made sure of it.  With help we first designed our gardens on paper, then planted.  Oh how thrilled I was when the seedlings popped out of the ground and began grow into plants.  I loved every bit of being at the garden.  They let us borrow the tools which I thought was really nice of them and they taught us why we needed to use them and how to use them.

I grew summer squash, corn, cucumbers and flowers.  We had a limited supply of seeds to chose from.  In the fall when our harvest was done we entered our prized produce into the "Garden Show".  There were several different entry levels, strait up veggies or fancy stuff you could do with your veggies.  I wish I had taken photo's, but I still have my blue ribbons somewhere.  My summer squash won a blue ribbon. It was beautiful.  My fancy entry won honorable mention but I have forgotten what I had done.  Summer squash (yellow) is still my favorite veggie.

I am still in love with gardening and always will be.  It always brings me joy, gives back way more than I could ever give it.  Even the year when I was too sick to have a garden, I somehow managed to drag my sick butt out and drop a few pumpkin seeds into a bed without adding any compost or turning the bed.  Nope.  Just dropped the seeds in and hoped for the best.  And they grew of course.  My garden never lets me down.  It is a love that never disappoints, no matter the odds.  A love that will last forever.