Beginning the new garden

Bean woke up at 4:30 this morning screaming, and then woke every ten minutes after that for the next 2 hours, crying her loudest. I was exhausted, and still kind of am, though I'm coasting on a couple of dark chocolate cherry chunk cookies that I just got out of the oven. (I'm baking a couple kinds of cookies to take to the beach--good, grown-up kinds with chunks in them.) But the good thing about Bean depriving herself of so much sleep was that she fell asleep in the stroller while we were out walking the dog this morning, and this meant that I got to garden. I just left her sitting in her stroller in the front yard and dug away at the bed in front of the house til she woke half an hour later.

It's been a few months since I was able to plant anything and now, of course, we're in a whole 'nother garden space. It's nice dirt here--heavy with all the clay, but still workable because previous owners have also done a little gardening and lightened things up a bit. I planted some hardy lantanas, some catmint, a sweetspire bush, 2 white flowering camellias, and some pretty purple asters, just for some color right now. I'm trying to go with a few new gardening assumptions at this new place. Namely, that global warming is here to stay and I should really be planting as much that is drought-tolerant and tough as possible. Also, that you just can't force soil conditions. The beds by the house appear to be moist-ish and rich, but when I get around to planting by the street it'll be plants as close to cacti as I can stand to make them since the ground out there is bone dry. And lastly, I had the recent realization--just this morning, in fact!--that I can make our gardens here full of smells that my girls will from here on out associate with this house and this life and maybe with their mother who loves them. Lantanas, lavender, sweetspire, gardenias, and tea olive are all present in these beds already. I'm going to start going with more good-smelling stuff to see what kind of smell associations I can instill in my babies. Seems like a nice way to try to be remembered.

And one final, parting comment about gardening before I quit boring those of you who couldn't care less. I forgot how much I really love it after this long, busy, extremely hot summer. It felt really wonderful to be back out digging in the dirt again. I can already see what this garden is going to look like in my head, and I can't wait to really get started, heavy clay and all.