Gardens and Kind Friends

When it comes to friends in my life, I have been a lucky girl.  Each time I move to a new place, I worry (why?!) that it will be lonely and I won’t have the close relationships I have had in places past.  I suppose it’s because whenever I’m going some place new, it means I’m leaving some place familiar where I already have such loving kind people around me and I can never quite convince myself I’ll be so lucky again. 

This latest move was no different.  I worried and hoped we would have friends especially since we’ve moved so far away from family, and I can’t say the smallest part of how I feel about my friends here.  I have been so blessed.

I was visiting teaching one such friend recently who asked me how I was and what I needed help with.  I told her that I was trying to clear out the many thousands of tiny lava rocks from my backyard flower bed so that I could turn the space into a vegetable garden.  It was taking HOURS AND HOURS and, because I didn’t have any proper tools for it, the work was just absurdly long.  I said this because it was on my mind—not because I expected her to do anything about it.  That weekend, I went to Oregon to visit some family and I came home to this:

This sweet friend had recruited her husband, another wonderful friend and all their tools to the cause of creating for me a beautiful garden space!  When I saw it, I cried.  I could not BELIEVE someone would do something like this.  Blessed? Yes, I think so.

Now, it’s taken me a few weeks to add to the glory of this space now, but after a pretty seriously failed attempt at starting my own garden from seeds, I purchased these plants at a local plant sale and looking forward to a summer of salsa canning!

This last one is “Caleb’s Garden.”  It’s got 8 strawberry plants in it.  Caleb could eat strawberries all day if I let him, and I’ve heard they can get a little unruly if you don’t keep them tamed, so I decided this handy little box would be a great place for “Caleb” to grow “his” strawberries.  The first green berries are starting to grow!! YAY!!

I’ve kept two children alive for 4 and almost 1 years (respectively).  Why can’t I keep plants alive?  Because they don’t cry?  That’s a pretty sorry truth, if it is.  Wish me luck!