Starting a garden, starting a blog, staring at a computer

I’ve been staring at my computer (and watching a horribly addicting episode of the Real Housewives of New York City) for the past 30 minutes trying to write the very first sentence of my very first blog about my very first vegetable garden. Such an important sentence. I caved and am babbling my way into blogging instead.

Just about as much staring went into starting the garden I am blogging about, too. I’m renting a plot at a community garden in St. Paul this summer. A few weeks back our garden manager e-mailed to let us know the rototiller would be available soon for garden prepping. (Rototilling?! What's that?! I though the plot came with seeds already planted?! Tilling sounds hard. And dirty. That's not what I signed up for.) Of course I e-mailed him back to ask if he was tilling, or did we have to do it? Come rototiller day Matt, the garden manager, tilled my plot for me. I took photos for my new blog. And pointed out the spots he missed. (Pointed them out to myself in my head -- I don't want to be kicked out of the garden on day one.)


I should back my tiller up a bit to explain this garden and blog project. At the start of the new year I wrote down a list of things I want to do before 2010 comes to an end. Blogging was one of them. Taking up photography another. Pretending I’m a farmer was number three. And using and improving my Spanish is on la lista también (hence the title and the Spanglish you'll see throughout my blog). I figured why not throw them all together. If I love them all, they match -- right? (That's also my decorating and fashion philosophy, and it's worked pretty well for me so far.)

"Jardinería verde" (I just love the look of the word "jardinería”) means "gardening green" in Spanish. And "green" meaning 1.) organic and eco-friendly; 2.) all things leafy and edible; and 3.) I have near to no idea what I am doing, but I can’t wait to learn. In this space, I’ll share my adventures of learning how to farm organically in the city, and how to look cute and bokeh while doing it.

I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say. And I invite all the green thumbs (and not so green thumbs) that want to help at my farm in the city this summer to come on down. I’ll need it. So far gardening has been a whole lot of staring at it through the lens of my camera. I’m afraid I’ll want to keep it that way. I don’t do dirt well.