Chaos Gardening
* It’s Spring - here is what is blooming so far in my tiny rental patio garden
* tulips, rose bush (no flowers yet, but it is green, even if the trees aren’t yet.), phylox
* can’t wait to sit out there and enjoy it. But it wasn’t always this way
My history with gardening has been very rocky. I have always had excuses to not focus on the garden.
* I was busy watering other things like my children.
* Walls I put up for myself - I am a renter, my family, my adhd,
* clean up a small space, build compost areas, put fences up
* plant gardens and forget to take care of them - busy
* indoor plants - forget to water
* Now as a woman in her 50’s with the kids all grown, I have a new attitude - I plant whatever I can in this garden of mine.
* What work did I put in to make that happen?
* Everything that is growing I planted on a whim
* I encourage you to plant whatever you can, whenever you can
* My 15 minutes of big fame from tulips
* A stop motion video I made of my tulips had over a million views last year.
* It was my only experience with Phone really blowing up
* It made me re-think “Why did I join social media?” To market my book - the flowers were not what I expected to go viral
* I’ve re-thought social media a lot this past few months, what is its value to me, what energy should I put into it? I will go into that in more detail another time.
* A huge reason for the garden is to enjoy beauty - it is so easy to look at what is wrong, remember to focus on the tiny wonderful things. (Too close to the street, two satelite dishes from the past, leaves left from last fall, the jumping rope Jon leaves out)
* In no way is my garden paradise - it is a far cry from my dream cottage core/witchy vine filled escape, but the beauty of it fills me.
* The small bits of beauty take my eyes away from the things that bother me, give me something to be happy about, even a simple metal sunflower
* Jon likes to leave out compost-ing right into the garden. I was super annoyed with it until I took this photo of the bee loving the celery. Feed the bees. Also, the color from the flowers really draws the eye away from the celery.
* .
* Plans for this summer -
* plant another rose bush - in the ground
* buy petunias for planters because I love the colors and the smell of them
* throw out some wild butterfly flower seeds and see what grows, and what bees and butterflies I can encourage to visit
* growing food - probably a future deep dive about forever chemicals.
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* Plant what you can, enjoy the little beauties, (glimmers) growth comes with experience and time, each little thing helps your garden bloom with more color and beauty. Plant the seeds, bulbs, starters, even if it is just one thing this year.
* Do you see how this is a great analogy to life? It sums up my learning style and attitude perfectly. My chaos garden this year is one of my projects, the others I am focusing on are:
* this podcast of course
* Wise Woman fantasy book club
* Discord community
* Writing more of my fantasy series
* getting serious about the business side of authoring
* really thinking about what I want to do with my artsy/craftsy life
* social media streamlining
* What are you going to plant this year? What are you going to grow?
Thanks,
Maya
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