“When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.” —Minnie Aumonier

The weight of the world is pressing in and society has gotten unbelievably fast paced. This should serve as a reminder to slow down. The majority of us are so wrapped up in our day to day lives that we forget that there is more to life than the 9 to 5. With that in mind, I am creating my homestead as a space where I can escape and forget, temporarily, the pressures and stresses of everyday life. I just wish, when I was younger, that I had taken a note from Peter Pan and never grown up. Adulting isn’t all it is cracked up to be. I’ll be going to my garden now.

I have been employed in one fashion or another since I was thirteen. My working life began with summer jobs, then progressed to the after school job, then to full time jobs after graduation. I had plenty of part time jobs to supplement my income over the years also. Now that I am getting closer to the end of my working career, I am looking for a hobby to occupy my time I will have once I retire. Gardening has become one of them. One of the things I have learned is that gardening takes time and patience. It also takes care. Once things start growing, your plants need regular watering. Without water your plants will die, and dead plants are not our goal. Our goal is to grow food and that requires water. It also requires our presence. Presence to water the plants. Presence is one thing I find difficult to provide my garden. Why you ask? The answer is my job.

I am a field service engineer and I travel… a lot. I am away from home every week Monday through Friday. The travel leaves little time to take care of my garden which includes watering the plants. I water my raised beds in the greenhouse when I get back home for the week, and I then water again on Monday before I leave. So far this has worked for me. My plants are all growing and thriving. However, my garden is small and keeping everything watered has not been that difficult. If my garden was fully developed with the six raised beds and the two in the greenhouse, keeping everything would be difficult best and I would not have the garden I wanted. Maybe gardening wasn’t the best choice for a hobby!

Good choice or not, I am vested and invested in gardening. I still have a few years to go before I am able to retire so I will keep my garden the size it is now. I am also going to run irrigation lines to help me keep my plants watered, but that won’t happen overnight. Another thing I can do is to grow things that are drought resistant. I don’t know what those are right now, but I can research what plants are drought resistant and be prepared for next season. This year I will be happy with my tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers.

One more thing that travel makes difficult is writing. My job has been keeping me very busy and I haven’t been able to keep up on writing articles. Before I started this webpage/blog, I had two months of articles ready to go and scheduled. Work was slow and I wasn’t away the entire week. All of those articles have been published now. So, last week’s and this week’s posts are short. I am sorry for that and will try to do better. I have a vacation coming up and my plan is to disappear and write.

This week was another short one, so be patient and stick around. I will have more, in depth articles on gardening and homesteading coming soon!Stay tuned and I will see you next Sunday!

— Greg