Yardening

I grew up with boomer parents – who grew up with a generation conditioned to keep, literally, everything after living through the Great Depression. This rubbed off on me (big surprise) but I tend to save mostly yard structures after years of conditioning by my spouse to give everything (that won’t fit in the attic 😬) we don’t need away.

So, I ordered 25 strawberry plants. I had several vague ideas about where to plant them. I just knew that I needed to grow all the berries. I love berries. Amazingly tasty super food morsels. And (mostly) hella easy to grow. Aaand they come back year upon year so they are also perfect for so-called lazy gardening.

The strawberries arrived the other day in all their dormant glory (plants that are dormant can be shipped easily as they don’t require dirt). This is where vague ideas meet reality. I walked around the yard in the middle of the day to see what the sun was doing – i.e. where “all day sun” happens this time of year. And it so happens that it is not where I was planning to plant the strawberries.

Now, ya’ll know the sun moves, right? I don’t mean east to west, day to night kind of moving. It’s position related to overhead (summer) versus closer to the horizon (the rest of the seasons). So “all day sun” changes depending upon the season. Especially if you have mature trees anywhere near where you are planting.

This matters a lot when you are planting something that is not happiest in the summer but still needs as much sun as possible. Enter, strawberries.

The part of my yard that gets the most sun this time of year is not somewhere I would plant edibles. Previous owners of our home used a then-approved chemical to deter termites. And, it worked!! Yay! (For them). It will continue working for the next 10,000 years. That’s right. 10,000. Needless to say, I am not planting anything that we consume closer than 50 feet from our house.

Enter, container gardening.

As I walked the yard, trying to piece together 25 feet worth of planting space for these strawberries, I found broken treasures. Two benches that should not be sat upon if you desire to stay off the ground. A piece of particle board to shore up one of them. An old raised bed box that was on its third life (cedar is the best, isn’t it?), and several not in use ceramic planters.

I was so pleased with myself. I am an almost rabid believer in the re-use part of the “reduce, re-use, recycle” mantra.

My son, however, is a genZ-er. He stops by my work area as I stand, proud as a peacock of my re-using, and says, “That is some *ratchet gardening you’ve done there, mom.” He didn’t seem to mean it as an insult, so I’ll take it as a compliment. Thanks, Ethan.

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*Ratchet is a slang term popularized by American hip hop culture. It was historically a derogatory term, but has been appropriated and now is used to describe somewhat unruly behavior, usually with a confident, defiant bent, used in approval of something. (This is my condensation of a lot of different takes on it- as with all slang, it is of the moment and its nature is dependent on the person using it to determine intention).