Ryan, Ryan, Quit Your Cryin', I'm Sure Your Garden Will Grow...

I don’t know if you know this or not, but Ryan has quite the green thumb. Kind of like a modern day Midas except everything he touches turns green rather than gold. I on the other hand have a black thumb…ring finger, middle finger, pointer and pinky.

I once kept a house plant alive for an entire year and when I told one of my friends who has multiple house plants she looked at me, looked at the plant and informed me that, “those plants are impossible to kill.” Thanks a lot asshole, there went my one plant accomplishment.

I guess plants have just never been my thing. I mean, I appreciate how beautiful they are and I like them around me, but they are just so needy. The plant needs water. Now it needs more sunshine. Oh wait, too much sunshine. You need to aerate the roots before you plant it, you need to tickle the blossoms, you need to fertilize and prune and shape and trim and blah blah blah. See, not my thing.

Fortunately for me, gardening is Ryan’s thing. Without him I’d be living in a house with no plants in the yard or at the very best a few half dead full sun plants dying in the shade while I cursed them for not growing. He has single handedly transformed our backyard and is working hard on the front as we speak.

You see, when we moved in there was not a plant to be found. One tree in the back yard, one out front and a couple of weeds were the only living things around. Slowly but surely, as time and weather permit, Ryan has been working away. The only problem with him loving yard work so much is that he puts so much pressure on his garden to grow that I think it is going to start snorting coke and hanging out with the wrong crowd.

He painstakingly chooses a plants location, works the dirt with some other kind of soil, digs a hole just the right size and then covers the roots. He has done this a million times and I think he is fairly confident with his planting ability but he still worries.

The first year he planted a vegetable garden he paced back and forth in front of it so often he wore a path along the edge. This year will be the third year that he has planted a vegetable garden and he is just as nervous that it will not grow as he was the first year. (mind you his garden was amazing and we had more vegetables than we knew what to do with and we eat A LOT of vegetables).

I remember searching around the house for him only to find him outside pacing by his tomatoes, willing them to grow. “They are going to die! What if they don’t grow? What if I kill them all? What if this is just a big disappointment and waste of time?” Wow, someone needs a cocktail; Bloody Mary with home grown tomatoes? IF THEY GROW!

So dramatic! Anyway, our yard is really coming together and I am looking forward to Summer so we can start spending more time outside. Salinas is cool and foggy until late August but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy our yard wearing a sweatshirt.