We had big plans for our garden this year. You wouldn’t think that we would have had those plans sidelined by COVID, but we did. With Wyatt home 24/7, Billy being an essential worker, the crazy weather (snow in April anyone?) and the rules we had in Michigan for a while regarding gardening supplies, it made it hard for us to get moving. I had started seeds back in March, but then they got too big and I couldn’t transplant them and they died. I had never tried that sort of production before and I obviously need to work on it.

But! Despite all of our setbacks, we are going to keep trying and rolling along. We finally had beautiful weather over the weekend, and we spent those days holed up in our backyard, organizing and planting seeds. I don’t know how this will work as we are getting a late start, but I am hopeful regardless!

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I am super excited about getting Wyatt involved this year. One thing that we planted this year are peanuts! When I was a kid like first grade or second, my uncle planted them one year and I thought it was so cool! I remember taking them in to school for show and tell. I was kind of a nerd even then I guess! So this year, inspired by those memories, Wyatt got to plant peanuts. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they grow!

We had a beautiful plan for a potager garden, with every section planned. Now we are going with a different approach for this year – we planted root vegetables in cloth containers, and then we are planting the seedlings that I hope shoot up quickly into the beds we already have dug from last year, which were intended more for flowers than food production but hey, we are rolling with it! I now have seeds started for a variety of vegetables – carrots, beets, radishes (and some radishes that I actually got into the ground and are doing great!), peanuts; then we have basil, lemon basil, thyme, Ice Queen lettuce, cabbage, yellow squash, Tom Thumb peas, pumpkins, and watermelon seeds all started. Tomorrow and the rest of this week I am going to try and get our flower seeds started, then hopefully over the upcoming weekend we get the areas ready for the beans, cucumbers, and snap peas I want to plant. And I found another use for the masks I bought! The pollen count was off the charts practically here this weekend and I wore my mask to filter how much I was exposed to as I worked outside. So bonus?

So although we are looking at a whole different idea, a more scaled down approach to our garden this year, it is a start and it is something. Maybe as things (hopefully) loosen up and become easier later this summer we will be able to work on getting the yard where we want it and ready for next year. We are already guessing vacations are out for us this year, so Billy’s vacation time will be spent at home – we are talking about knocking out some projects that we are usually to go-go-go to actually get to. We are learning to roll with it and regroup, and are moving along as best we can.

***And as I finish this up this morning (I started this post yesterday afternoon) the weather is reporting record low temps again this week! Looks like I will be moving my little starter babies inside again for a bit!