I have always wanted a vegetable garden. For some reason, I have this intense desire to plant a seed and watch it blossom into something beautiful and plentiful. Maybe it is my mothering instincts that foster the need to nurture something to maturity. I am not sure.
To be honest I don’t have a green thumb at all and I have a green thumb envy of people who do. Regardless of my lack of gardening skills, I try anyway.
Year after year, as soon as spring rolls around, I find myself filled with hope, outside with the kids, tilling a small patch of dirt and planting seeds. I have always loved this time of year. It is good bonding for the kids and I and there is something magical about planting a seed and watching it sprout.
Once the seeds are planted I find myself heading to the garden everyday to inspect for growth, often hollering at the kids to come and look. I’m sure I am far more excited than they have ever been, but it is fun nonetheless.
There is one problem; my desire for a vegetable garden, and my husband’s desire to save money on the water bill have been the source of epic battles every year. No matter how I tried, the water bill always won. My plants would start to die because my husband would turn off the sprinklers here and there and forget to turn them back on. Come late summer, I would look at my garden in sadness at the dead plants.
One day, early this year, we were at a friend’s house for a birthday party. My friend’s husband showed us a box he built in his backyard. In it was a beautiful vegetable garden overflowing with kale, lettuce and tomatoes. After the two men chatted, my husband turned to me and said, “We should have a vegetable garden.”
Here is my question to you, why is it that I can say something to my husband over and over and it won’t sink in, but someone else can say the same exact thing and suddenly he is all ears? There is little else more frustrating. It didn’t matter that I had been trying to talk him into it for years. It took a friend to suggest a garden to him and suddenly he was all in.
So, this weekend we put in a box vegetable garden. One my husband and I worked on together. We took two trips to Home Depot for supplies, cleared rocks and dirt, built a box, filled it with soil and compost, put together a drip system and planted a few plants.
When all was done we felt tired, accomplished, proud and full of hope.
Here is what I learned; regardless of how the project came about, it felt great to work on a project together. One that we were both excited about. It was fun to plan together, to shop together, to build together, to hope together. I can’t remember to last time that we did anything like this and it felt really good. To work on something as a team.
If it has been a while since you have worked on a project together, you might consider doing this too. It doesn’t have to be a garden, but it does need to be something that you both feel a desire to work on. Something you can both get behind. Whether you build a vegetable garden box or you have a home project that you have both been talking about wanting to do, stop talking and start doing. Work on it together.
Working as a team and feeling a sense of accomplishment is great strategy for building strength and togetherness in a marriage.
Before
After
Crossing my fingers that soon I will have a garden full of vegetables. But even if they don’t grow, I have a heart full of memories 🙂
Tammy
Did the fact that you’d been trying to have a vegetable garden ever come back into the conversation? Or did you decide to leave well enough alone? Maybe your husband needed to see the results before he was willing to put in the effort and extra expense. The garden looks great. Will you be updating its progress on your blog?
HI. Thank you for stopping by. We did talk about it often. I guess he did need to see someone eles’s results first. Once he saw he could grow kale, he was all in 🙂 So far, garden is going well. I will post pictures when it has started to fill out. Thank you 🙂