Do You See What I See?

I started to give up hope on my planting the garden skills. My expectations were high and for some reason I though that all the seeds that I planted would grow overnight. I faithfully watered all the plants daily, but did not see any signs of life. I was certain that my squash would never show up, the roots of my tomatoes would rot and my strawberries would simply protest producing berries. Thankfully I was wrong! When I watered my tomatoes one morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I saw tiny green leafs coming out from the dirt. In a few days, I saw my squash forcing itself out and my strawberries had pretty white flowers. I was so thrilled that I must have told my husband to look at the progress of our bucket garden twenty five times in one day!



We continued to see progress daily. I must confess I was upset when I noticed that the flower peddles on our strawberries were falling off. “I must have over watered them”, I thought to myself. However, the next morning I noticed that the reason the flower peddles were falling was because the center of the flower is what produces a strawberry! My tomatoes were also growing like crazy, but I think I planted way too many seeds in one cup. As I was pulling some of the tomato plants out, my husband asked me what I was doing.

Me: “I am going to throw some away, because I only have 1 pot to plant them in and we have a gazillion tomato plants growing. “

Daniel: “No you are not!”

Me: “I am not planning to spend another $70 on buckets, plus you don’t even like tomatoes.”

Daniel: “Well, be creative and figure out where to plant them, but you will not throw them away.”



So perhaps throwing my plants was not the best tightwad idea, but I really didn’t want to spend anymore money on the garden. I talked to my friend Jennifer, who is very knowledgeable about gardening. She suggested that I stop by the bakery department at our local grocery store and ask for empty 5 gallons buckets that they throw away. What a brilliant idea! I must have missed that part of her lesson a few months ago. On a beautiful Saturday morning I stopped by our local grocery store and a very nice lady handed me over two buckets. They had to be cleaned because sticky icing was all over them. When I came home I was very tempted to stick my finger in the leftover icing, only to find out that it was all melted due to the buckets seating in my car for several hours. I soaked my buckets to get all the sticky icing out and then let them air dry on the sun. My plan is to stop by the bakery department several more times to pick up more buckets. Stay tuned and hopefully soon I will show case the fruits of my labor!