I wasn’t going to plant a garden this year.

I’d decided, because this was my first summer here, to let each of the four gardens in my backyard do whatever they were going to, and then use that knowledge for next season’s garden planning. 

So far I have raspberries, hydrangeas, blueberries, sunflowers, hostas, lilies, a lilac bush, and a giant bleeding heart that made me feel like GUS (God Universe Source) was confirming that I was right where I was intended to be. 

You know that garden/backyard tour the horticultural society puts on every summer?

I'm obsessed with it. 

I have such fond memories of traipsing around the city with My Beloved, delighting in all the beauty and whimsy from the gardens we visited, hands held and fingers pointing at all our favorite features. I would love to one day have a backyard that makes the list of places to admire. Buying this place brings me closer to achieving that goal, which is the idea in the back of my mind when I daydream about what I’d like to do with this gigantic backyard that is currently too much lawn and not enough whimsy. 

With that in mind, much of this journey has been about slowing down, and completing tasks in small, incremental steps. It is driving me nuts. My baseline is a hyper one. I want what I want when I want it. But cultivating the earth doesn't work that way, so like I said, I wasn’t going to plant a garden this year, and then I watched Zach Galifianakis’ gardening show on Netflix and now I’m here to tell you about my peas. 

At the very last moment, inspired by the dreaminess of that gardening show, I tossed some potato, pea, lettuce, carrot, and bean seeds into what I can only assume was built to be a vegetable garden. And now, a few weeks later, the peas are ready for stick support. (Shout out to the potato tops, I love you)

There is a mini forest beside the walkway into my backyard. I let the tree babies stay until they’re a certain height, and then I snip em and toss em into a pile. I have taken every other pile of foliage into my compost bin but for whatever reason, I have never felt like this pile should leave the backyard. Upon noticing that the peas have reached the height they have, I take a gander in my garden bin to see if the bamboo sticks I had survived the move. Alas, I cannot find them. 

Hmm, I think. What to do what to do. 

And then it comes to me.

Mini trees would make excellent sticks for my peas!

Let me tell you, I had the loveliest time preparing these sticks to support my peas, and now, peas supported by sticks from the mini forest pile, I feel like some kind of gardening goddess guru. All those years of sitting in a tiny backyard yearning for space and opportunity to engage a relationship with the earth in this way, and now it is here, and I am verklempt, like all the time. 

Becoming a solo homeowner has often felt insurmountable. I worked so hard at obtaining mortgage approval, I hadn’t considered until I was in my new home, that homeownership is something separate. And the understanding and acceptance of what that responsibility is has required a few therapy sessions, many prayers, and a pot gummy or two. Four months into it, and I'm just now able to speak about it more publicly, able to feel roots underneath me and my spine a little straighter about it all.

Moments like this with my peas, moments that I can engage creativity in my relationship with the earth, moments that feel aligned with the sacred flow of nature, make all the hard, scary stuff of homeownership feel manageable. Moments like this, along with the new tradition of finding myself outside blissfully pulling weeds and talking to the plants after every rainstorm, help me create a relationship with my new home, settle into myself, and feel like I might even pull this off.

Gotta go snap a pic of my peas before the rainclouds do their thing again,

E