The Little Garden That Could

If the above title sounds familiar, it's because this is the second blog I've done that tells the story of something orange that we've rescued from the trash pile. If you don't know the story of our alcoholic lawn mower, now might be a good time to click here and read that story. 
We were just dating then. 
I should have known. 

Anyway, back to the garden...

I'm not good at giving hard advice.
Go after it now or  wait until it's right: I can usually nail that. 
Left or right at this stop sign: I need time to think.   

I told Cody when we bought the farm that I wanted a garden. He seemed to blow off the idea, seeing as how - since we've met - I've wanted to learn to quilt, paint the old hutch in Momma and Dad's barn, write a book and lose fifteen pounds. He knows my goals are high and my ambition sometimes gets washed away in a flood of obligation. 

But this spring I was serious. 

And we had a really serious conversation (it may have mirrored the Corn Crib conversation) about the garden. 
And how it's an obligation. 
And it needs attention. 
And it needs water.
And tilling up the yard we've worked so darn hard to replant would be a new commitment. 
Why would I want to till it up? ....blah blah blah. 
One by one, I saw a quilt, a hutch, a book, and fifteen pounds roll through my mind. 
UGH. 

But then - he agreed to it. 
With a compromise, of course. 

Rather than till up the yard we'd worked to hard to re-seed, we decided to do "raised beds"...straight out of Pinterest?
Nope. 
Straight outta used Vitaferm mineral tubs. 

We took the empty mineral tubs that had already served their purpose in the pasture quite well and drilled holes in the bottom. 
Then we cleaned a feed floor and filled our "garden" with three parts: dirt/manure/straw. 
Unconventional, but has anything about our marriage been considered the "norm"?

Green beans, lettuce, tomatoes (x4), peppers and zucchini

And then we waited for rain. 

We didn't have to wait very long...

 And that rain did really great things for my fake green thumb:

Week after week, our Vitaferm garden provided.

And then I spotted this guy.

 Can you see the finger-size predator, 

munching on our cherry tomatoes?

We enjoyed this spread often 

this summer, with a side of beef. 

So many tomatoes, you'd think I had a country music album in stores. 

This little garden, built out of tubs in the toss pile and waste that could have fertilized a field, has done so well for us. In fact, besides the the two of us, it's fed my parents, a neighbor, two fat rabbits and an unruly heifer that found it one July afternoon. 

We know now what we did wrong:

Planted the tomato tubs too close together. 

The soil is so fertile, but drains too quickly. 

The lettuce never came back after one cutting - no idea what we did wrong there?

You know that thing in your life that you've wanted to do, take on or accomplish?

::That thing that your heart desires:: 

Whatever captures your mind for more than a fifteen mile stretch on your drive home. 

Whatever you wonder - or wander - about. 

Should you start it? Yes. 

Do it. 

Make a plan. 

Try it out. 

Invest in it. 

Use your five free hours on it. 

Seriously, Do It. 

Try something new. 

You're not going to live forever.

One day you'll look back and wish you would have started sooner. 

I know I did. We took a leap, did things differently and have enjoyed watching this garden grow. And, I'm already stock piling Vitaferm tubs for next spring. But I refuse to rinse them out; I'd hate to mess up a good thing. Doesn't every garden need the Amaferm® advantage?

For real gardening advice, that doesn't involve cattle production, you should check out The Blog Bloom. 

Part One: Better With Age

Following a Memorial Day weekend spent out of town for a wedding, I came home to an alarming site:
Granola bars scattered across the kitchen floor. 
A Bonnie Mohr print that was once on a tripod, laying face down in the middle of the living room floor. 

And worst of all: My beloved fern in pieces across the dining room. 

Confused and quite freaked out, I spotted the bandit still inside our home, laying under the kitchen table...DEAD. 
But before dying, of course, it left droppings all throughout our house that sat empty for three days. 
A Starling. 
In our home. 
Reeking havoc. 
And demolishing my fern. 
I removed the disgusting bird (while crying and gagging simultaneously) with pliers and bleached the place down. 
Our home looked better, but the fern was a mess. It was as though the dirty bird nested there all weekend. I was sick. 
Sick over a house plant, you ask?

This fern isn't just any house plant. 

It is a symbol of things that 
get better with age. 

When I was a young girl, we visited Bob and Ula Marie House at Wonder View Farm. The names may ring a bell - or maybe not. They were the couple that sold Momma and Dad their (our) first Shorthorn cows. Rosewood was one of the great ones that came from the House family and Wonder View Farm, and today her story lives on at BSG.

Driving down their lane that evening was like stepping back in time. A beautiful, well-maintained yard. A full garden. No weeds in site. A modest white farmhouse which stood with great pride. While the guys went to the barn, I remember that Ula Marie invited Momma and I inside their home to exchange some information for our Home Extension Club. Momma was a fairly young member, and Ula Marie was quite active. As we entered the home, I couldn't help but notice dozens of ferns in the back entry way. Ferns of all sizes, in several different pots. Momma raved over them, and that's when Ula Marie told us about the profound significance of these ferns. 

Bob (who, as I write this, is 85-years-old) had a great-grandmother who maintained a fern at her homestead and would give "starts" of that fern to family members. She would separate the roots and place them into a new planter to begin, or "start", a whole new fern. 
Pieces of that original fern were passed down through the generations and the original plant spanned homes, families and decades. 
In 1951 Bob married Ula Marie, and Ula Marie was given her own "start" to the family fern.
The array of ferns that I observed as a young girl in the House Homestead was just a small sampling of how much that fern had reproduced - and thrived - over the years. 
I was amazed by it. 

Weathered by time, change, location, atmosphere, various owners and more - these ferns remained a testament to the power of all things that are able to stand the test of time and get better with age.  

As a young girl, the story of that family fern certainly remained in the back of my mind. Because of the symbolism they held for family and time-tested durability, ferns became my favorite plants, and I've used them widely as a homeowner over the last six years. Each time I bought - or buy - a fern, with gratitude I think of Bob and Ula Marie House and the "start" they gave my own family in terms of Shorthorn cattle. 

Aspiring to have a wedding day - and marriage - where even the smallest details hold great meaning, at our wedding last August we had nothing at the alter but ferns. 
My bouquet was made of ferns and The Growing Tree. 

BowSankey Wedding Flowers Getting Watered

As a wedding gift, Bob and Ula Marie gave Cody and I our very own "start" to the family fern. A gesture of heritage, dedication, durability and things that get better with age. 

Soooo.....It was our "start" that I found in the middle of the floor Sunday night. Perhaps you now understand why I'm nursing this plant back to life after the bird of death has demolished it.

In a world where few things actually improve over time, I find myself holding onto this darn heritage house plant with the hope that I can give someone else another "start" as Bob and Ula Marie gave my parents in cattle and Cody and I in marriage. 

Few things get better with age. 

But oh, some things do. 

Your friends
Your favorite song
Your favorite pair of jeans and boots
Love you give and receive
Your judgement
Your 401K plan
Your confidence
Your breeding program and legacy
Your antiques
Clint Eastwood and Sam Elliott
And let us not forget the The Wine.

Look around you. 
What things in your life can - or do - get better with age?
Do you appreciate them as you should?
How can you preserve them?
How can you make them better for the next?
Or Protect them?
Or Pass them on for the next generations?

I encourage you to be the kind of person who enjoys the things that get better with age. 

Because quite frankly, you're not getting any younger. 

This is the first of a two part series. 

Read tomorrow for the second half of Better With Age!

Turning Thirty: A Shift In Priorities

Some get old. 
Some get wise. 
Some just get old. 

Someone asked a while back just how old I was. 
I told them 24. 
Didn't blink an eye.
Time. Flies. 
In my defense, 24 was a great year. I bought a house, took in a feral mutt I named Dixie and during a trip to Texas, was introduced to Malbec wine thanks to my friend Terri. 

A few great friends (and a brother and sister-in-law) have turned thirty over the last year and I've gotten a really good laugh out of it. 
They turned 30 and quite frankly, they got old. 
Like, had back surgery and became parents, old. 
They turned as old as Tim McGraw was when he sang, "My Next Thirty Years" - that's old. 

And maybe a bit trying to hard? 

But in the last two weeks, it's hit me, hard: I will turn 30 this summer. 

I WILL TURN THIRTY THIS SUMMER. 

Does that freak anyone out as much as it does me? 
Yeah, probably not. You're not the one turning 30. 
But quite honestly, all the signs of 30 are present. 
Some tapped me on the shoulder as I entered my birthdate preparing for taxes.
Some hung around a few hours longer than they needed to on a Saturday morning after a late Friday night.
Some initiated a call to my beautician..."I want to go lighter than last time," I vainly told her, to cover up the strands of gray I'd found. 
But all signs were accounted for. 

As I walk blindly into the light that is the big 3-0, every so often I'd like to give a brief list of five things that justifies my aging this much. Do you understand that this is me justifying it?

Turning 30: Five Shifts In Priorities

1. Instead of weekend getaways to Reno and Vegas, Cody and I now align our schedules so we can both be home to breed heifers, watch heat, or to have just one of us home, in general to take care of things. We took a weekend off in March to go see George Strait in Nashville. At Tootsie's Cody looked over to me and said, "Might as well live this up. These trips - just the two of us - will begin to be few and far between."
With a smile of agreement, I gladly understood.
Kids? Nope. 
Cows. 

Old Saturday afternoons:

New Saturday afternoons:

2. I care what kind of Kleenex and toilet paper I buy. It's no longer a matter of price, its a matter of comfort. We're simply too old for Great Value. 

3. I care more about my lungs and eardrums than I do the bar we're at. If I can't see you or hear you, don't even start a tab. 

4. I bought a pair of White Mountain shoes. Which might not sound like much to you, but this signifies my recognition of the fact that my feet are an important part of my body and they require care. And so do arches. 

5. When CS and I consider a splurge, we now do mental math to reconfigure what that dinner at Flemming's would buy us, otherwise. 
"That entire night, fuel, prime steaks, drinks...that is about the cost of a new metal feed bunk"...we mentally evaluate.
We choose the feed bunk and grill out.

Priorities change, bodies change, places change, and for some reason I'm having a bit of a challenge accepting the fact that I would have started kindergarten 24 years ago. Or that in ten years I'll be forty. Or that the ads on Facebook are targeting me for wrinkle cream. 

On the bright side (because there always is one), I read somewhere that you're 26 percent less likely to make a New Year's resolution in your 30s, but if you do make one, you're 26 percent more likely to stick to it. 

Well in that case, to those lingering ten pounds: Bring. It. On. 

Good To The Last Drop

My Escape´sledded down the old farm lane last Friday evening, arriving to the Original Jean's house just before the setting sun drifted below the frigid tree line. It was cold, not looking anything like the photo below; the only green to be found was on the shutters.

It's a grandiose homestead, but on the inside of those walls the conversations are sensible and simple. 

Good or bad.

Wrong or right.

Black or white. 

Or, pink?

Grandma asked me if I wanted coffee and if so, one, two or three?

I replied I'd love a coffee, black, but just one. 

That wasn't what she was asking. 

This is the mug The Original Jean gave me to use. Suggestive??

The Original Jean went on to make a cup of coffee for me from her Keurig machine, then proceeded to use the same K-cup for two more cups of coffee. 

Three mugs filled by the same K-cup. 

I jumped up to advise when I saw her making the second cup without changing the cartridge; weeks shy of 84 years, she knew exactly what she was doing. 

She was serious about getting every last use out of her resources, taking "good to the last drop" quite literally. 

"No sense in wasting it," she said, sipping a cup of coffee that more closely resembled dirty Greens Fork River water. 

Breakfast consisted of a frozen bagel from a bag that had been around a while. I'm 98% certain I was present when The Original purchased the same bag of bagels at Aldi in 1995. Remembering that I'm eating it in the name of science and my dear Jean, I continued to chew my bagel while requesting more spray-on butter. I don't know where my Momma learned to cook, but I'm certain she had to have married into that deal. 

"You don't like it?" Grandma asked, noticing my jaw-full effort. 

"No, it's good," I replied, completely guilty and feeling it.

"No it's not. But the bags almost gone and you're helping me clean out the deep freezer. Don't worry. Carry-out chicken for lunch," she was honest enough to make me laugh aloud. 

In our home:

• Broccoli rubber bands were an intricate part of every science fair project we ever entered.
• Soap was never tossed; it was always paired with a larger bar to work for a few more showers. 
• Rubber boots lasted far after they got their first crack, as plastic grocery bags served as liners for years. 
• Trash bags were never on the grocery list; to this day, CVS bags and mineral sacks line the bins. 
• Beef brains, tongue, heart and liver: all parts that provided iron in our young diets. My parents didn't waste any part of the animal we'd raised for food. 

Today, as a wife preparing a meal, that entire list makes me want to gag. But it sure taught me to appreciate a great cut of beef.
Good to the last drop, indeed.

A weekend at The Original Jean's confirmed that she is still living life to the very last drop.  
She doesn't have to suffer through weak recycled K-cups numbers 2 and 3, yet she does in the name of being thrifty. 
She doesn't have to start her day at 5:30 every morning, but she does in case anyone needs her. 
She doesn't have to send Christmas letters to Granddad's old cattle friends scattered across the country, but she does because she knows that would please him. 

I overheard a friend say once, "In reality, I guess we all live beyond our means." 

I disagree with that statement. 

There are still folks who clip coupons long after the farm has been paid off in full and the kids are through college.

Moving past the money, I do wonder how many of us live life with the "good to the last drop" mentality?

Jeans that repurpose when patched. 

Milk cartons turned home for delinquent nails. 

Soup that stretches. 

Minutes that matter. 

Hours that honor.

Days that deliver.

And years that build a life worth living. 

Are you taking advantage of every opportunity that presents itself?

Should you have gone with your heart, rather than your pocketbook?

I wonder if more times than not I live comfortably - with the stout coffee and New York strip - rather than the beef brains purpose that is requires I stretch beyond my comfort zone to grow into someone worth knowing. 

This week I challenge you to find a resource - person, place or thing - you've wasted and find a way to make it good to the last drop.

Maybe a service project you need to invest more time into. 

Maybe a pivotal email you have left lonely in the drafts folder.  

Maybe that corner of the barn that collects nothing but the outcasts. 

Maybe a person who could be so much more if you just gave them the time.

Maybe it's a simple as being creative in the kitchen and not throwing out that food on the brim of darkness. 

Because let's face it:

If the Original Jean made an entire bag of bagels last 19 years, the least you can do is finish off the Super Bowl leftovers.