potential

Here is a new raised bed in our vegetable garden.  This bed has a complicated history and purpose, but I think it's all going to work out just fine -- despite a tension-filled hour in the garden today.

This bed is for my mother-in-law.  After her husband died, she moved across town and into a condominium less than a mile away from us.  She has a small patio there that gets too much sun so she's not able to garden as she used to.  

My MIL has very particular ideas about everything, and she often comes over here to "help" but micromanages me in my own garden instead.  I know she means well, but the garden is my sacred space.  So I decided that she needed her own well-defined garden plot over here.  I wanted it to be big so that she would be able to grow anything she desired.  I wanted it to be raised enough so that she could work it even when she was feeling tired or sore. I wanted it to "fit" with the other brick beds we've made so I fought D on making sure this bed was made from bricks, too.

So...  here is the new planting bed -- done and filled with a nice mix of manure, old compost, and sand.  Behind the bench in the photo is an area we've always just used for branches and debris, but I reclaimed a 15' x 3' section of that no-man's land for planting more herbs and flowers to attract beneficial insects.  I filled it with extra planting mix from the new raised bed and marked it off with a huge tree branch -- giving the new flower bed a sweet, natural curve.

The frustrating, interesting, weird part of the whole day was when we were out there today, and my MIL could see this *huge* new bed that was made just for her, and she spent the whole time micromanaging me over in this throw-away area of the yard behind the bench.

I put the bench there this year for my MIL, and I wanted to plant some pretty flowers behind it to help the health of the garden and to please my MIL.  But instead of focusing on what I *was* doing for her, she focused on everything I needed to be doing better or differently.

Whatever. 

Here is some pretty kale.  We are going to eat some of that tomorrow.

Comments

[cynthia]

it looks wonderful Cathy----you so kind and thoughtful....