About a year ago I heard the motto: "hacer menos, pero mejor" which translates to ~ take on less responsibilities, but do them better. It was exactly the advice I needed to hear so I dropped everything that wasn't essential to survival. I let go of my ambitions to have a manicured patch of vegetables and instead have been focusing on the much more manageable task of tending to a potted garden of greens and herbs in my front yard.
Living in a rural area with very little access to health care I feel that growing herbs for medicine is totally an essential task. So many of the herbs that were scattered throughout this land I brought together just outside my kitchen door where they are on hand at any given moment.
And alongside the established herbs in pots and a few in the ground, I am sowing seeds for new herbs that I would like to establish in the future garden in my future home. For years I have grown echinacea, a much sought after herb that I wrote about in a recent herbal profile for the Herbal Hive community.
Last year my vegetable patch was taken over by flowers ~ sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos. It was SO beautiful to walk out there and be surrounded by flowers from my homelands, and others that I have collected over the years from dear friends. The only downside was that the vegetable garden was a little walk away (and, of course, didn't actually have any vegetables to speak of). This year I want to see flowers as I go about my work at home & go to and from our building project on bikes.
Some zinnias actually sprouted up on their own which I transplanted into pots and around them I sprinkled more seeds to put in an in-ground flower bed nearby. I am so excited to see the rainbow of colors their flowers will produce in just a month or two and well into fall.
And there is a big achievement to announce! After years of trying & failing, some tulsi basil has germinated. There are 6 plants thus far and hopefully more. And now that I write this I am realizing that I also need to plant some Italian basil too!
In my sprouts garden everything is going well, every day I have a bit to harvest and sow more seeds about twice a week. Here I have mustard greens on the left and beet greens on the right. Those will be trimmed off for some cheese & chicken quesadillas for lunch today.
After all my talk of giving up the vegetable garden, I have gone back on my word just a bit. It is sad for me to give up entirely on anything to do with plants. So, I have formed a compromise. Now that we are building our house mostly on our own, I just don't have the hours per week I used to dedicate to weeding & planting. But, I cannot imagine fall and winter without squash so, alongside the wildflowers that choose to grow there, I will also be planting some beans and squash. Here are the young plants that await their day of transplantation.
Well, that is all for the garden tour. I hope you have enjoyed it! Until next time my gardening friends 👩🏽🌾👩🏻🌾