So let's start from the beginning. My family and I moved to Tennessee a few years ago, and when my mother bought the house we live in, the photos from the previous owners showed 2 parallel garden boxes in the yard. I was quite excited about the idea of using them. After growing up my whole life in cookie-cutter houses in the suburbs of Southern California with no yard suitable for a vegetable garden, growing food was something I always wanted to be able to do for myself and my family. So imagine my disappointment when we pulled in to the driveway of our new home in Nashville for the first time, and I run to the backyard deck to look over the edge and find in the grass... no garden boxes. The previous owners removed them. I don't necessarily blame them but--as i've now learned--the effort I believe it would. take to remove all the dirt and haul away the box isn't worth the relatively light cost of building new ones (although, I guess that's not a decision for me to make for someone else that I don't know).

So that first year we lived here, I talked my mom into helping me build one box. She did most of the work for it, at the time, I wanted a garden, but for some reason my motivation to actually take care of it was low (I'm no parent, but I'm sure for those of you who are, you're thinking 'ugh typical'), Truthfully, I was 26 in a new place, with downtown Nashville an 11 mile drive--also the site of my workplace at the time--and my interests shifted to making friends and learning my way through which bars we could avoid the most tourists at on Broadway.

Long-story short, I'm 29 now and I no longer drink, and I no longer work in downtown. I do still live at home with my mom, though. I know, what am I still doing at home at 29? Well, to be honest, this life is expensive. And not just for me, but for my mother as well. She's in the loan business, and with the state of the world the last handful of years, the business wasn't exactly booming. The plan was always for us to move here together (after my oldest brother had moved here a year before and met the love of his life and promised us little hands to play with someday soon) to get acclimated to the area, and for me to move into my own apartment within 6 months. But, the world continued to get expensive and her business continued to decline for a while. While she may not appreciate my saying this on the internet for anyone to read, I feel as though this isn't a large audience at all, I'm still living at home just as much--if not much more--for my mom's financial benefit as my own. We coexist well together, and we divide expenses just about evenly. And, to continue on with honesty's sake, I'd rather live in our beautiful house with our gorgeous, lusciously green backyard than live in a highway backed apartment complex with a bunch of strange personalities anyway.

All of that background information to say, that I rediscovered my desire to have a garden at the beginning of this year, and I've grabbed the concept by the ears and drug it along through the spring and summer seasons with me. Once it sufficiently warmed up (that doesn't happen until mid-late march here in Nashville), my mom and I went out to the yard to pull out all of the old dead things we planted in year 1 (I don't even remember what we did plant, although my mom is sure zucchini and crookneck squash were there) and pulled as many weeds as we could until our fingers were sore. We shifted the dirt from one side to the other to lay down new barrier and some chicken wire at the bottom to prevent digging pests, and prepped the garden box for revitalization. I grew everything in there from seeds. In a seed starter I germinated Purple Cherokee Heirloom tomatoes, a variety of hot pepper plants, zucchini and yellow crookneck squash (lets go round 2 baby), carrots, and cauliflower. We also planted in pots some basil and thyme to keep on our deck.

Now, this garden has become my new obsession. I don't know what it was, but something someday made home-making my new pride and joy (I now have a 5 month old sourdough starter that I nurtured myself as well). I knew I wanted a garden before, but completely lacked enough interest or motivation to maintain one. And now, walking down our deck steps at 6 in the morning with a mug of coffee in hand and my target wellies on my feet to say good morning to the veggies, and give them a drink and some pruning is my favorite part of the day. I can't get enough of it. Unfortunately, the cauliflower plants were eaten early on by something--I'm assuming bunnies, as they're practically invasive where I live-- but everything else has completely flourished. I've already harvested a handful of zucchini and crookneck squash, and the plants themselves have grown to an enormous size. I'm truly blown away by how large they've gotten. The Purple Cherokee Tomatoes have become quite large as well and are just beginning to flower. I'm hoping to see fruit on them super soon. The peppers are coming in beautifully as well, a cluster of them forming in the center of the Thai hot pepper plant, and I'm eager for the day I see them begin to redden. I do have a potted Chili de Arbol plant on the deck, and some of those have begun to redden at the tips. It's been so exciting :)

We made a squash and zucchini chicken pasta the other night with some of the harvest, and it was incredibly satisfying to know that the star of the show was something I had grown.

Now, for the fun part, my first nephew (if you'll remember the mention of the promise of little hands) is turning 1 this september. He was born the day before my mom's 59th birthday and, of course, she was thrilled by that. He's crawling all over the place these days and pulling himself up on to everything. My guess is he'll be walking before we know it. Anyway, I had this idea that I wanted for Teddy, my nephew, to be able to pick out his first pumpkin at the pumpkin patch at his mimi's house. So, on Monday this past week, I went to Lowe's solo (brave, I know), and purchased three 8x12x2 planks, and asked to have the third cut in half. I brought the wood home and spent the next few days staining it with a weather resistant stain, and on Thursday, I went back to Lowe's for some hardware and as many bags of dirt as my muscles could muster and spent the morning building a second garden box. I'd like to point out that I did this one entirely solo, my mom didn't lift a finger this time. A few hours, two blisters, and a nice farmer's-style sunburn later, I had built a second garden box perfectly parallel to its thriving predecessor. And, in it, I planted about 12 pumpkin plants of different varieties that I had spent the last month and a half growing from seed. I feel so, incredibly great about how it turned out, and the plants took the transfer beautifully. Knowing that i've completed a stage of what is becoming a core memory for my entire family is wonderfully fulfilling.

So now that you have the background story on how the garden boxes in our yard came to be, I'll be keeping you all updated on the growth and harvest, and the turnover as the seasons change. By this time next year, I'm hoping to have a third box out there, and to be growing as much of our own produce as possible!!