On Gardens and Being a Senior Design Widow

Jay is in his last semester of his degree in electrical engineering and second semester of a senior design project.  Where he must work with a TEAM.  On their hours, which, as young, single men, generally means after 2pm until....after midnight.  Which means that I, as a nine to five gal, never see my husband awake.  Unless it is he waking me up when he gets home.  It is miserable, and I am pouty, but never fear.

The Best Friend since Preschool is coming to the rescue.  (She is a Pharmacy Widow in that her husband to be works out of town and only gets every other weekend off.  She has had to deal with far more separation than I and understands my irritability at not seeing The Boy.  But I digress.)  We are planning a weekend of various projects around her home, which include stripping wallpaper (how naughty!) and starting a garden (and dirty!) and cooking something delectable.  I believe she is especially excited about getting rid of the early nineties wallpaper in her bathroom, and I CANNOT WAIT to "help" her with "her" garden project.  (I guess this is where I confess that I want "her" to "have" a garden because I want to use her backyard since I, in an apartment, do not have one.  There.  Sorry about that.)  I won't get into any great debate over non-rural-area-house-and-garden-making (but go here if you are interested!), but I do want to try my hand at growing my own vegetables.

I've had an interest in growing things since I can remember.  My great aunt Nell always had these great catalogs where you could order seeds and seedling and sapling, and I was beyond fascinated.  I've tried my hand at growing things, and my most successful plant to date has been some Jasmine that I bought at the Biltmore Estate five years ago.  It is still alive, but that's only because it's been in my mother's possession.  The desert rose The Boy and I bought after we married died when we moved to Birmingham (he overwatered it...truth.)  Various flowers I've bought over the years died.  I managed to overwater what first looked to be a promising window box herbs.  Too much sun killed our St. John's Wort.  I let the rosemary freeze over the holidays.  The lettuce I tried to grow in boxes just didn't have the space to flourish, and I didn't know proper harvesting techniques to at least have the baby leaves from it.  My only minor success was broccoli.  I can remember steaming the biggest heads at the same time, and it was the greenest broccoli I'd ever seen.  I hope that having some actual space to grow things will yield more success, and that that hope and excitement will get me through the last few weeks of the dreaded design project.