We Have A Garden
To own a garden had been a big dream of mine for the longest time. It will be a place where I can grow food to not only fill my stomach but also more importantly to make my heart fill with happiness. I also dreamed of living in a house that the back door directly connects to the forest, so I can take a walk with TT having a cup of hot coffee in my hands, morning dew will make my socks wet, and my lungs will be filled with crisp Autumn forest air. Everyday my fingertips will be either covered by garden soil or flour, sometimes they smell like apple pie, sometimes thyme.
I always knew what my version of a “perfect life” is like but never had a clue how to combat my pride so I can get there. Although I don’t have career goals and am not interested in climbing the ladder, the unnecessary pressure of wanting to stay successful haunts me. It forbade me to give up on my job in the city and move to the suburbs.
Moving away from Santa Monica was a leap of faith, partially because the house we are moving into granted me a garden. Little did I know, after the move my heart settled, I feel happier than I ever was. Although the back of our house doesn’t directly connect to the woods, but it’s actually not too far from that. The frequency of me wanting to look for places to hike dropped dramatically. We are away from the city and people now, everyday there’s only bird chirpings, no more traffic noises. I seldom find myself needing to leave because we are so lucky to have everything we need right here.
Besides owning each other, TT made friends with another kitty – Clyde from Quentin’s family. As for Sha-Sha she developed an interest in spending time outdoors in our yard. Sha-Sha was already very good at responding to my calls since she was very young, thanks for her high food drive, now we successfully trained her to become even more reliable on the recall command so she can be outside safely everyday under our supervisions.
I always wanted to provide my animals a fuller life, being able to own a yard took me way too long, but finally, I can sit by the door steps watching them baking under the sun, or even better, me taking an awfully out of focus pictures of them playing with a stick, a free toy from the mother nature.
After days began to warm up, we started a string of projects at our new home, one of them was TT’s outdoor potty spot. I never wanted TT to hold his bladder for me just because I had long and unpredictic working hours, so we had a potty pad at home for him to use whenever needed. After moving to this new house we established a new rule for TT to only go outside, not more potty pads.
We picked up stones to line the area, sunk 1/3 them down to the ground with landscape fabric to block weeds, later back filled the area with pea gravel pebbles.
To ask TT to go to the design area is simple, while he is very good at going potty on command. The hard part is to make him realize this is one and only place he should be doing his business. So far TT is not 100% reliable but pretty consistent with only miner oopsies.
Sha-Sha on the other hand is extremely violent when it comes to using her bathroom, there is no way to keep our house clean, no matter what type of the litter or litter box I have her to use. I am tired of finding wood dust or sand on the couch or huge sand storms around her bathroom. Our experiment processes involved me building a maze with cardboard boxes leading to her main litter box, and that still didn’t work. We finally landed on a DIY enclosed design using two storage containers with $5 pine pallets, cheap, so easy to clean, and perfect!
I wish I knew this earlier, we are so late to the game of using pine pellets for cat litter, I listed out places you can get them from in the U.S. below, depending on where you live, sometimes it can go as low as $4 for a 40lb bag.
As the snow backed away day by day starting in the middle of March, I began to repair old grow beds with 10 inches boards. The last few beds took the longest to thaw, yet I finished 6 beds before April. I also removed the old rotted raspberry trellis made by the previous owner and replaced it by two 4 by 4s. I chiseled them to make cross halving, and sunken them 3 feet down into the ground below the frost line so they will not come loose again.
Around late May, our garden pushed out the most beautiful display. Garlics I planted last fall starting to grow bigger, we also have radishes, peas, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and more.
After I made my choice to move here, I couldn’t believe how satisfying it is to move away from a city, a cage somehow I trapped myself in for years. Right now I appreciate and find joy in every moment, spending hours watching plants grow or wild lives passing by.
Or occasionally taking pictures of a super buff squirrel.
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