Trying Something New

Being married or even being in a close relationship with another person means that you often find yourself doing things that you would never just decide to do on your own.

While a majority of the family on my father's side are full-time farmers (yes, the real kind of farmers that have cows, pigs, crops and the like), I did not receive the green thumb gene or was raised to have much interest in the outdoors. I am a stay inside kind of girl who finds gardening to be more work than I have desire to participate in. However, this spring Kevin decided that this needed to change.
And, even though we only live in a house with a small yard, we Kevin has planted for us a garden in pots on our upstairs balcony. With some help from our friend Bhavik and several trips to the gardening store, our pots were filled with plants and even some seeds which promised to grow tomatoes, green and hot peppers, basil and even cucumbers over the next several months.

And while Kevin's father laughed at our attempts to garden in pots (his dad and grandparents were once professional farmers too), I'm happy to report that our garden is thriving! It is now a part of our nightly routine to water the plants. (Thus, we haven't killed the plants yet!)

We have several small tomatoes and green peppers that are already beginning to show. We also had fresh basil with our evening meal two nights ago.But, besides just the potential food we hope to gain from our garden, we have felt just a little more connected to nature than we usually are, especially as a mother bird has made her nest in our green pepper pot.

We've been watching this mother bird for weeks now. She has built her nest and laid four eggs. Our mother birth constantly watches her eggs now and we're looking forward to the eggs hatching anytime soon. Our bird seems to be a great mother, ever mindful of her unborn. She gave me much inspiration last week when I was at home one afternoon and evening writing my sermon. It was a pleasure to share in her company.

So, our experiment in trying something new is going quite well. I can't wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store for our little potted garden on our porch and what we'll find there!