I have really been making an effort this year to embrace what I like to call "suburban housewife gardening."  I'm not growing food.  But I am trying to make my yard look pretty.  And I'm finding it...strangely rewarding.  Like, as in, I LIKE doing it.  This is very weird for me. Mostly I think "gardening" and I think "ugh, hot, bugs, not allowed to stop, neverending weeds, impossible task, defeat, fail, die."  Basically.

But this year, I told myself that I would make a reasonable effort at doing it ANYWAY.  Like, DESPITE not wanting to.  Like, you know, being a grownup and shit.  Doing stuff that is of benefit to your overall quality of life and that of your family, even when it's not first on your list of favorite things.  

And amazingly (to me), I am having fun.  I keep digging things and weeding things and transplanting things, and trying my hand at dividing things and spreading things around.  It's kind of fun!  And...I have, like, a sense of PRIDE in my work!  This is crazy.

Once, when I was 8, I asked my mom to sign me up for gardening club through the park district one summer.  She obliged me, and took me to gardening club all summer.  I got a plot of land behind some big old barn, and I was responsible for it.  I planted seeds fine, but then I think I got bored?  (Or too hot?  Or beaten down by the relentless summer sunny sunshine?)  And I just...sort of stopped participating.  I would go to gardening club, and I would just sit in my plot until my mom picked me up.  My weeds and crabgrass crop was spectacular by the end of the summer.  There's a really great couple of shots of me posing in my garden at the end of the summer.





I don't know who that other kid is.  The basket contains my "harvest", which I think was primarily beets.  (See all the tall grass and weeds in the picture?  That was my plot.)  I remember I was appalled that the beets didn't automatically taste or look like pickled beets, which I adored back then and still adore today.

Anyway...gardening.  It has not traditaionally been my forte.  My mom made me weed stuff in the summers.  I hated it.  That's about the extent of it.

But this year I'm having fun!  I'll take some pictures when I get around to it.

Right now, I'm off to a Moms Meetup thing through this group that I joined.  I could be doing playdates every single day.  They're pretty active.  But I try to also get actual things done around the house, too.  (Like gardening!)  So it's a balance.

But now I'm going.  See ya!