I love you a lily more each day

THIS. IS. THE. YEAR.

Waylin and I are getting dirt under our nails and turning our thumbs green. I’ve always wanted to be a gardener, especially with vegetables. But, it’s really overwhelming and I’ve never really lived somewhere where I could have my own garden. Even in my current house, I had to “fight” Ben to let me have THREE plants. 😝 I would have normally just given up, but damnit. This is my house too, and if I want to potentially grow/potentially kill LITERALLY three plants, I’m going to do it. 💪 There were tears involved, but I stood my ground and I got my little experiment plants!

A few days before I obtained all of the supplies from MIL and FIL to start a container garden, I picked up some flowers to bring home. I spent the majority of the last year buying myself flowers with Waylin’s help. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, she can’t come with me to the grocery store (some stores have banned children even if they have a mask!) I stopped buying myself flowers since she wasn’t with me. But, on this particular trip, I needed a pick-me-up so I picked a $4 bouquet of carnations that I thought she would have picked.

Why containers? Well, Ben didn’t want me to plant them in the ground as we may be putting our house up on the market and he thought that might distract from buyers. 🤷‍♀️ I decided to try the gallon bucket approach because they are portable and seemed easier to focus on the needs of one plant.

MIL and FIL were the real MVPs of my gardening experience because not only did they pick up the plants for me, they also built the buckets for me too! We have 2 tomato plants (heirloom and Boxcar Willy) and a red bell pepper plant to try to keep alive! I really wanted to do this because I thought it would be something fun for me and Waylin to do together, especially in quarantine.

She had SO MUCH FUN! It made me wish I had 10,000 more buckets to plants because I enjoyed hearing her talk about raking the dirt, digging holes, and planting. Her vocabulary has expanded so much during this quarantine. I try to take videos, but the bulk of her conversational language comes when I’m not recording. It fascinates me with how much language she has learned over the past few months outside of therapy. I’ve been working with her ever since she graduated from Speech Therapy and I think it’s been successful!

We are so proud of our little container garden! Waylin’s aunt Lindsay made her that T-shirt too! My in-laws have been trying to keep bees the past year or so and I thought it would make a perfect T-shirt. Lindsay took the idea and ran with it! She’s too good to us! ❤

Along with gardening comes watering…and boy does Waylin love to water things. The dandelions, the patch of tall grass I forgot to go back and mow, these orange lilys that won’t die...she’s been watering it all. 🌿🧤👒

We have had some nice weather days lately and have also noticed “Waylin’s tree” has grown SO MUCH! It’s a tuilip tree that we planted as just a twig before Waylin was even born! MIL gave it to us from their house and after a google search to see what it would look like, I was sold! We will definitely be digging up this tree when we go to move. 🤣 Ben thinks I’m kidding, but I’m not. We will put that into the contract for the new buyers!

Everyday she helps me “check the leaves” and holds them in her hand very gently. She looks like she knows what she’s looking for…(I don’t know what I’m looking for either, so she impresses me).

When it comes to gardening, it makes me very sad that my Nanna isn’t around to see us. She grew up in Austria on a farm, so she had a natural instinct for gardening. I loved seeing her in her cute slacks outside pruning her plants and collecting her harvest. She was such a good woman…I wished I knew how deep that sentiment is when she was alive.

Here’s to hoping Nanna watches over our little container garden and blesses us with a nice little crop for us to eat! 🙏