A little piece of happiness...

Each morning I have some coffee then check my garden. It brings me such peace, my walking meditation. Watching the plants grow, especially from seed, is the essence of hope.

These planters contain strawberries, japanese eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, snap peas, carrots, basil, thyme, oregano, and flat leaf parsley.

I'm off to the farmer's market, the one red strawberry begging to be picked isn't enough for our family, so I'll supplement for now...

A spring beginning...

I feel like I should preface my launch of this blog with my intention to garden: fresh food for my family. I read about self-watering containers in the gardening book, Fresh Food for Small Places and had my light bulb moment. This will solve all the issues I've had in the past. Containers drying out and killing plants (O.K., so I missed a watering now and then...life can get hectic). Planting lettuce seedlings one day, only to wake up with only tiny stems left (and I imagine some fat, happy slugs laughing in the corner of my backyard). Or the neighborhood cats who decided THE best place to do their business is among my spinach. Once I read about these containers, I knew I had found the solution to my gardening woes. I still have a few things planted in the ground, but already I can see the ease of planting above ground. I have rigged up ever device I could think of to keep the cats out of my lemon cucumbers...not limited to plastic forks, hot pepper flakes, and citrus rinds.
So while my intention is to share my first year of trying my new gardening container, I also plan to share garden related recipes, and possibly other creative interests as well.