We did so many little projects this Spring. Some of them we finished and others are probably going to carry well into Fall.
This marked our 4th Spring working to get our yard to sustainable and livable conditions. If I had to think back on some of the decisions we’ve made and things we’ve done, I would fully agree that about 85% of our time was spent overthinking until we’d run out of ideas. Or reasons not to just start!
We laugh about it now, but we’d spend way too much time on where to plant what we already had – which was a large moving truck’s worth of plants and plantlings. There is a fun story I’ll tell one day about how we had to get a second moving truck and make a separate trip across the state.
Specifically, we had to get our avocado and mango trees in the ground before it got too cold. Ocala winters are nothing like the coastal area we moved from and freezing temps are a thing here. What makes it so funny is that there was virtually nothing else in the yard for them to contend with. We were paralyzed by the blank slate before us.
I remember pointing to a spot out back and telling my husband to plant his avocado tree “there”. He thought I had reached some sort of epiphany (ha ha, I had in a way, just not the one he thought it was). I just really wanted something planted in the ground! That tree did die after we dropped into the 20s and 30s, but it came back and it’s still going strong.
This Spring we focused on filling in spaces and creating structures. We realized we could plant things so much closer than we originally had, so we started planning in between spaces. You know the herbalist in me had to have some beds solely for herbs so we started planning and building those too.
When I don’t have my hands in the dirt, I try to document as many moments as possible. Here are some of my favorites over the last few months while watching everything start again…
Some of the roses started as early as February, but by mid-March I found rose buds popping up everywhere…Act II of all the little plant babies I thought didn’t make it…New roses in the ground…Spring sunsets…And little furry visitors. All happening in our little yard!
Sometimes looking back on all of these moments gives me exactly what I need to keep going.
