Garden Dreams

I love to garden - to dig my hands into the dirt that has been warmed by the sun and smell the possibilities, but gardening around here is a gamble. I don't know, maybe it's like that everywhere. Here we fight pretty regular winds that blow 30-40 mph and that moves a lot of dirt, not to mention it burns the leaves to a crisp. When I first started to garden out here, I figured raised beds were the way to go since we don't have any top soil. Raised beds are also supposed to discourage weeds. Um, not so around here. Remember those winds that blow not only dirt, but all sorts of weed seeds are relocated as well. Still, I jumped in and bought this book:

I built some boxes.

                             

Mixed some dirt. And I WILL say that the dirt I mixed using the combination in the book was absolutely golden. Year after year it just felt so rich and light. Good stuff!

                             

Planted some seeds.

And I had varying degrees of success.

                            

One year I had a bumper crop of tomatoes...from 4 plants! I picked all these in November the night before our first freeze:

                           

Another challenge is rain...or lack thereof. Our annual rainfall is 11". Once in a blue moon we get 15", but more often than not, it's less than 9" and we've had more than a few years with 3" all year. We have well water, but here at the house it's not great. I can keep a garden hobbling along, but unless it rains, we're not going to have much to share with friends and neighbors.

                           

The other problem is our summer heat. Our air is dry out here in the desert and most summers we have days and weeks on end of 100°-120° temps. I have to water early in the morning and give everything a good soaking again in the evening. The beds I built aren't really conducive to using soaker hoses.

So why would anyone want to garden here? Because I am an optimist and along with the challenges come some lovely blessings. We have a long growing season here so we can just replant when things go awry and pray that the 2nd...or 3rd...or 4th time is the charm. 😉 Our  temperatures drop off considerably in the evenings too. There is something so wonderful about the way this desert air smells at night and stepping out into the crisp morning air of a new day is invigorating.

The other day I read this article:

Easy Access Raised  Garden Bed

and I REALLY want to build one of these:

Really it's my 56 yr old knees that want me to build it. One part of me would love some help, but one kid's in Arizona and one's in Oklahoma and DH has more on his plate than he ought to have. Another part of me (my 3-yr old self) wants to build it alone so I can say I did.

I am going to post about it anyway, for reference. I had better sleep on it for a few days first, but today it's looking awfully enticing.