Spring, 2012

For the past five years, I've been working from home as an adjunct English instructor at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College so that I could spend as much time as possible with my little ones, McLean (now five) and Chloe (who will be three in September).  Just recently, I've been given the amazing opportunity to teach full-time at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, my alma mater.  As I began piecing together plans for my syllabi, I decided to ask my students to create a blog to record their reading responses and chronicle their semester's journey.  Having never tried one myself, I thought I'd better give it a go . . .

I've never thought I had a green thumb.  In fact, when my husband Doug and I first moved in together, I told him that if he wanted house plants (which he did) he'd have to be solely responsible for them since I seemed to kill everything I'd ever planted.  He used to spend every weekend landscaping, planting, watering . . .  But that was before children.  Now weekends often feel scheduled down to the minute and his gardening dreams are often unrealized.  At first I wasn't particularly bothered.  He was able to keep the front of our minuscule city lot looking neat, and the backyard was already evolving into a promising play space.  But as my babies began wanting more than mama's milk and I became more and more conscious about the foods they were putting into their growing bodies, I started viewing my fraction of an acre differently.  I now saw every square inch of dirt as fertile soil, every slope unsuitable for play as possible farmland. 

I started small, planting an herb garden on the top of the stone wall encompassing two sides of our backyard.  Right outside the kitchen door, they were easily accessible for cooking and (astonishingly!) flourished from my first attempt.   I became braver with each passing season, asking Doug to build a couple of raised beds in the front yard, planting berry bushes on the front slope, adding a planter to the end of the back deck. 

I've definitely had some disastrous seasons, and I'm still far from feeling confident in my gardening skills, but I'm learning all the time and beginning to see and taste some sweet results.  Right now, our raspberries seem to be at the end of their peak and our blackberries are just starting to darken; my spinach seems to be about done, but the lettuces show no signs of slowing down; the strawberry plants that my kids snack on every time they go out back to play appear to be enjoying their longest season yet; and the veggies in the raised beds are beginning to flower.

A couple of weeks ago, the children and I harvested fifty heads of garlic (now tied and hanging in the basement) and my husband planted sweet potatoes in their place.

Our newest and most exciting adventure, however, was yesterday's addition of two young chickens, named Blade Beak and Star Baby thanks to McLean and Chloe.  They already seem at home in their hen house and chicken run, and have started letting McLean pick them up and cart them around (it was difficult to get him out of the coop this morning).  Hopefully, once the dogs realize that they're not their next meal and we figure out how to clip their wings, we'll be able to let them roam around the back yard while we play and work.  I realize that my family is a far cry from being self-sufficient, but the journey continues to be so empowering . . .