Harder Than I Thought

Okay, so last night I attended the Vegetable Gardening 123 class with my father at the Environmental Education Center. Which by the way is gorgeous. Its out on Chandler Heights and Lindsay. Anyway, I mentioned this class about a week or so ago. Let me start by saying it was chock-full of information and this was only the 1st class out of 2. Now I have absolutely NOTHING started. No plot, no compost, not anything. My dad keeps asking me. "Have you started your compost pile yet?" "Well no dad I haven't. DUH!" My father has had a successful garden for about the past 3-4 years. He went with me to see if he could learn something new about gardening since he was self-taught. He learned a couple things but the first class was geared toward the beginning gardener. I learned that starting a completely new garden has lots and lots and lots of preparation. I don't know why I was thinking I could just dig up some dirt, throw in some seeds, water them and BAM! instant garden let's eat. Well, I need to re-think that plan, or lack thereof. Seriously, it is going to be an undertaking and quite an investment for beginning materials. I want to have a raised garden but here is where the investment comes in. You have to buy materials to build the garden, you need to buy good dirt as well as an irrigation system as well as stakes and so on and so on. I may scale down what I want to plant since this is my 1st year so I don't have to take out a second mortgage just to get started. I did enjoy hanging with my dad and getting his ideas for my garden. That was a definite plus. I can't wait until next week when we talk about what grows well here in AZ in the winter. I am blessed to have my dad living in the same area as I do but if your dad lives someplace else you can still connect or reconnect with him. Call him up and ask about his hobbies, or explore a new one together albeit long distance. Take an interest. If your dad is anything like my dad, he is not really a talker, he's a doer. Now I have something else to talk to my dad about when I see him. You know what makes it even sweeter? This is our thing. No one else in my family has taken an interest. It feels special, sort of like when I was younger and we would get up every Saturday morning and wash our cars side by side and we would talk. Makes me smile just thinking about it.