City gardening for small spaces

     The days are heating up, the seemingly endless winter finally behind us, time to get ready for summer.  After the significant down-sizing since the dissolution of my marriage, I was a little stuck figuring out how to bring my love of gardening to our patio.  I miss having the ever ready crop of fresh herbs for cooking and sharing the joy of planting and harvesting our goodies with the next generation.  How to realize my dreams of a lush garden in the confines of a 12' x 4' deck.  Other than the size, it is ideal, getting full sun all day.  I decided to give vertical gardening a try after the flooding from the torrential rains last year due to the planters overflowing and the soil blocking the drain.  That resulted in me up to water well past my ankles frantically trying to dig the drain clear and finally throwing the planters over the railing when the water reached the edge of the patio door.  That was a super fun mess to clean up, but on the plus side, I added a bit of detergent to the water and gave the deck a bit of a scrub at the same time.  Might as well use the near disaster to some advantage.
     So how does a super busy, single mom get to achieve this with the minimum of fuss?  As much as the environmentalist in me wants to try making a hanging planter out of pallet wood, the reality is I haven't even managed to find the time to put up the shelves in my bedroom yet, so simpler needed to be the route to go.  I remembered having a canvas, over the door shoe organizer many years ago and with a bit of effort I managed to locate a new one that was not white.  My son and I selected a variety of herbs, including chocolate mint, which I'd never heard of before and of course, a selection of his favorites, spinach, and strawberries.  I had no idea if this would work or not, but we planted our selections and it seems to be going well so far.  The treated canvas has drainage, so watering is a cinch.  Somehow we ended up with a tomato plant that will have to be relocated to a bigger home but we are enjoying our new vertical garden.  Not bad for $12 for the shoe organizer and another $15 in starter plants.  Check back for updates on how the crops work out.  Happy gardening in your small but cozy spaces!

 

 

"I'm still standing." Balancing selfless with self.

When I decided to go back to school and become a real estate agent, I still envisioned it as a part time endeavor, with my role of mother taking precedence.  The tumult of that first foray towards reclaiming my independence from my husband and children probably hastened the demise of my marriage, but I knew deep down that it was doomed anyways.  I recognized I could not be happy living someone else's life and dreams.  I needed my own.  So with a child on one side and a baby in the other arm, I went back to school.  I studied at baby group, with the maelstrom of toddlers and babies, racing around me.  I studied during nap time, in 20 minute stretches, while I mopped, did laundry, dishes and the yard work in between.  I did homework, changed diapers, potty trained and spent countless, unpaid hours helping my husband expand his business.  Mine was the thankless work, the drudgery, the dishes and clean up.  A job I'm truly grateful belongs to some one who truly deserves it, and is actually paying for the opportunity.  Even through all that I accepted that my primary role was wife and mother, as long as there was a small corner of my world for me, but as often happens, my husband's needs eclipsed my own.  The marriage ended and he found someone willing to assume the role he wanted and I have scraped and scrambled up a seemingly insurmountable number of hurdles in an effort to make a life for myself and my kids.  I've accepted that so much is beyond my control.  I have limited time with the eldest child as he is my stepson, even though I've been there since he was 6 months old.  I've chosen to stay in a city where I have very limited support and the economic prospects are not great, so he would never feel abandoned by me.  I chose the hard road to keep the boys together as much as possible.  I faced the public scrutiny and whispers every day as I struggled to reign in my darker impulses, successfully, I might add.  No one's tires were slashed and the posters I had made to let the city know the truth of what had happened, never got distributed, there were very few public blow outs.  It was a close race at times.  Some days all I wanted was to get even.  It would have been epic fun.  But I didn't really see a future in being an evil queen, so I chose to walk through the pain.  No giving up, never stopping.  It's a year and a half after and I'm a single mom, working two jobs, and finally feeling like things might just be ok in the end.  I haven't managed to get divorced yet.  I've had to use the money for that to renew my real estate licence, so the closure is going to have to wait a bit yet.  I realized how far I'd come when I actually realized that I didn't have a picture to use for my Facebook profile in which I wasn't just an accidental inclusion in it's composition because someone was taking pictures of the kids.  And I realized, I'm not okay with that.  I deserve to be the focal point, at least part of the time.  For now my profile picture is a little out of date, but I will have a new one soon enough.  Besides, it was kind of nice to hear how great I looked in the photo, I thought the fact my bangs had magically grown out over night would have been a dead give away that it was 15 years old, but apparently not. 

New Year's resolution, 2013: strength

2013 is winding down, the presents long unwrapped, several irreparably broken already, the leftovers have been made in to soup and I must say, I am grateful that the year is done.  I feel terribly guilty for celebrating the days slipping irretrievably in to the past.  These were, after all, such important and formative years in the boy's young lives, but it has been a long hard fight, never losing focus on the future.  There have been a few days that I didn't have the slightest clue how I was going to get through it, and to be totally honest, I still don't know how I did it.  A new home, two new careers, countless sleepless nights and temper tantrums,  more mistakes than I can even count, but we have survived and even moved forward.  I know for a long time it was just a deep and burning anger that propelled me forwards but anger, justified or not, can only get you so far.  It burns itself out eventually, or it consumes you.  It has been replaced by a deep sadness over what could have been, but also by an acceptance of the simple truth that there are just people on this earth that just aren't going to get it and being right doesn't mean you're going to win. 
For the new year, I am making a promise to myself and my boys that I am no longer going to wish for things to be different and to deal with the realities we have been dealt in life.  For the coming year, I am going to remind myself often of something I had forgotten.  I would rather be called a bitch than dumb.  The things for which I want to be remembered when I'm gone are strong, capable, tenacious, loving, charitable, intelligent, funny, witty, resourceful, fierce and independent.  I don't remember wanting to be thought of as nice at any point in my life.  Even as a child, I strove to excel.  Why, over the last few years I have allowed that to be taken from me, is something I might never truly understand, but I'm happy to be able to see it with clarity now.  I owe it to myself and my boys to stand up and fight for them.  To be the warrior mother they deserve.  If I can't protect them from what's happening, at least I can show them that I fought the good fight and show them how a woman should be respected. 
With the changes we have undertaken through 2013, I can't wait to see where we will be a year from now.  I know the boys are already counting down to next Christmas with glee.  Only 358 days to go.
Happy New Year's!