Growing Patience

As I said before, I used to garden a lot. I have a big garden where my front yard used to be and in the past have enjoyed growing lots of food for my family to enjoy year-round. I could spend about 2 hours in the garden working before getting pretty tired. That was about my limit. Right now my limit is about 15 minutes. That's a huge change. And to avoid the sun I'm typically out there at twilight.

Despite my husbands best efforts to keep the weeds under control it has quickly gone from "charming wild garden" to "out of control wilderness." Although I do get frustrated that I can't be out there as much as I want (even 2 hours was a lot less than I wanted.) It's also forcing me to prioritize and have patience.

One big change I'm doing this year is I'm not hand watering anymore. Believe it or not I used to get out there every other day with my hose and hand water every plant. Yeah... that's not going to happen right now. I also don't have the spoons or money to put in a drip system. So I went old school. Enter the sprinkler!

Even now when I see a sprinkler going I want to jump through it like a 7 year old again. There's just something summery and joyful about rays of water shooting up at high as your roof and raining down upon eager plants.

My fella installed it for me last night while I got my 15 minute "high priority" gardening done. That was the first time in a long while that being in the garden didn't make me want to cry because of what I "couldn't do." Instead I felt glad that I finally got to tackle the few things that I could do. And that hopefully what's already there won't die from a lack of watering.

Don't you just want to run through that?

Watching the water do its magic on my thirsty plants from my chair I realized that along with the sunflowers, my patience is also growing. I'm sure I'll still have plenty of moments of frustration, but hopefully they will come less often.