Okay so maybe not "new"

I had always been so focused on school throughout my youth that I grew up without any real hobbies. Don't get me wrong-- I had friends, did theater in high school, and enjoyed reading for leisure. I was so scared I wouldn't make it into pharmacy school in high school and undergrad that I focused on little else. Then, once I got to pharmacy school I was so focused on passing classes and getting through the doctorate program I did little else but study and hang out with my friends on the rare occasions we could get away from studying. Then, once I finally graduated I was so scared of being a terrible pharmacist that I (and my anxiety) would work myself into an exhausted haze that left me with little energy to do anything other than vegetate on the couch after work.
A couple years later I found myself bored. And depressed. I was married to my wonderful husband and had an amazing pug that I doted on. We had even started fostering for our local pug rescue (DFW Pug Rescue) but I still felt as if there was something missing. Like everything I did was for someone else. I dabbled in knitting but it never really took. I hated how every hobby I thought I might be interested in seemed to have prohibitively high up-front costs with very little reward at the end. How many different scarves and hats does one person need? My penchant for perfectionism meant I was never patient enough with myself to practice knitting long enough to be pleased with my work; all I could see were flaws. This carried through with most other hobbies I dabbled in.

I have always loved the outdoors, though. When we moved into the house we currently occupy I was giddy at the amount of yard space we had. At first I only hoped to keep the lawn alive, but as time went on (and the lawn did its own thing) I thought it would be neat if we bought a plant to celebrate our first house and watch it grow as we grew. So my husband and I went to the local nursery and looked around. We were thinking a tree, but nervous about having to dig too deeply or placing it in the wrong spot we ended up purchasing a pineapple guava that we put in a large pot. Large enough so it could grow pretty large, but not so large that we couldn't move the pot in in the wintertime. I suppose that was the beginning. Even just walking around the nursery was exciting. I had browsed big box store garden departments but they were never as inspiring. Believe it or not we only took home the one plant that time.

I had never been that great at gardening. I tended to start strong and then "let nature take its course". This meant the rose bushes I planted at my parent's house grew into unkempt monstrosities that were eventually removed by the HOA. In fact, that happened to a couple shrubs I planted there... Others withered in the hot Texas summers. I had always felt like the homes and apartments I lived in never had enough light to sustain house plants. It never occurred to me that some plants could thrive in the shade.
So we had the one pineapple guava. Somewhere along the way I purchased a rosemary shrub from a big box store. Then the bushes that the previous owner had planted in hopes of increasing the curb appeal didn't survive the hot Texas summer and my ignorance on how to care for them. I dug them out and for the rest of the summer we had an ugly bare spot in a front bed. Once the weather started to cool we made another trip to the local nursery and purchased some grasses and ground cover to at least put something there. We also bought four lilac bushes we planted in pots. A few varying heights and greens. A trip to the box store for something else had me bringing home a gardenia bush at some point

We were accumulating plants but I still didn't know much about what I was doing or how to care for them. Then the next summer I read something on container gardening. All you needed was a bucket from a big box store, some compost, fertilizer, soil, and a plant and you were off. "I can do this," I thought. And so my first container garden was born-- I bought a small raised bed box and three buckets. I drilled holes in the buckets and filled them with a rich mix of soil and compost. I did the same with the small raised bed container. Another trip to the nursery and I had two tomato plants, a jalapeno plant, chives, basil, mint, and a few flats of marigolds for some color. I bought a trash can that I turned into a compost bin.

My first, small vegetable garden attempt. I will admit, I wasn't always the best about watering and I believe sometimes the heat kept the blossoms from fruiting, but I did get some production. Those jalapenos were hot and the tomatoes were the best I had ever tasted straight off the plant. I used fresh herbs in my recipes and really enjoyed utilizing things from my garden when cooking. Even though it probably could have been better, I felt successful. I felt like maybe this would be a hobby I could let myself maybe not obsess over being so perfect at and actually enjoy. And since you got food and flowers it was a productive hobby. I felt like I was learning valuable skills. Does anyone else worry about surviving a zombie apocalypse? Well this would be a good skill to have right?

So I purchased books and took to the internet and decided that next spring I was going to start early and start from seed. This blog is my journey.