The garden of dreams

After years of procrastination, I finally decided to get back to writing and sharing my thoughts. A lot has happened in the past few years, and I have been fortunate to have had some amazing experiences. I have met some incredible people, traveled to new places, and learned a lot about myself. I have also had my fair share of challenges. One thing that I am super proud and grateful about is my brand new garden . I have always loved plants and gardening, and I have been dreaming of having my own garden for years but being in school and the constant moving made it impossible. By pure chance, I discovered a beautiful community garden and ofcourse I had to get a plot. March 2024, I got my plot and I have been spending most of my weekends there since then. There’s something so pure about touching the earth and walking barefoot on the land. A lot of nice physical excercise too! Although, I have always been close to plants, this was my first hand experience doing actual gardening. I have learned so much in the past few months and I am so grateful for the opportunity to grow my own food. I have planted a variety of vegetables and herbs including tomatoes (cherry, stipped german, amish slicer gold), peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, basil, mint, cilantro, carrots, radishes, mustard, cabbage, spinach, onions, butternut squash, and more . Most of these were planted from tiny seeds and it’s been so rewarding to see them grow and produce. It’s magical to see such a big thing come out of a teeny tiny seed. I could only start growing in mid April (it was snowing untill first week of April!) and unfortunately, I had to leave for California in May. I was so worried about my plants but I had some amazing friends (VB and MK) who took care of them while I was away. I am so grateful for their help and I am so happy to see my garden thriving. I came back to ripe and delicious cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchinis in September and I was so happy to see that my plants survived the summer. I have been harvesting and eating fresh veggies from my garden and it’s been so rewarding. Its October and time to prepare the garden for winter, until next year! I am so grateful for this experience and I am looking forward to growing more next year. One outcome of this exploration was that it allowed me to meet a lot of new people and make new friends.

The hardest part was the beginning, removing all the dried out weed, making beds and getting things started. The first batch of seeds I planted in late March never germinanted because it was probably too cold but I had success next month. A lot of the produce was also eaten by wild animals! hope they had fun haha. One mroe thing I learned is that plants are very very resilient and they will thrive even if you water them just once every 7-10 days or maybe even less frequent sometimes. This is just the beginning, I hope to grow most of my food on my own one day!