Our Move and Our Gardening Motivation

It's been about 9 months since we moved about 15 miles from where we previously lived. Can I even begin to describe how much 15 miles has been a disruption to schedules and sanity? Ha. In all seriousness, this move has been great for us. We have to drive further into town to get groceries or to run to Home Depot, but we have a bigger area outside to run around on.

I guess this was my ultimate step in truly embracing and marrying up Charlotte Mason's saying "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life" with her strong urging to spend much time outside learning about nature. We can now get outside and study nature in our own backyard. We can grow a garden and appreciate how God gives us food right from our very ground from teeny tiny seeds. We can learn a little bit about life cycles and become somewhat closer to our food rather than just depending that the grocery store will always magically have whatever our palates crave.

Don't get me wrong, I know we didn't *have* to move to achieve all this. There are ways to make any of these things work without uprooting the family and dragging all your possessions across city.

But I also desired to have some space to grow some food. I know I'm in for an uphill battle with my black thumb, but all this business with GMOs and pesticide laden produce really creeps me out! How cool would it be to just merely grow, say, blueberries for the family. Fully organic, completely fresh and straight off the vine antioxidants. Or tomatoes, fresh from the vine and even canned at home in jars as opposed to relying on the BPA-laden cans and who knows what else that I don't know about from the grocery store.

Hence, another venue of my life to pursue excellence in. The family's gotta eat - I might as well feed them excellently and make myself studied in the arena of nourishment and health. One step at a time!

So without further ado, I present our first blackberry pickings! Can you hear the pride beaming from my fingers?

Hopefully there are many more to follow, but my plans for the bulk of my crop (should we be so blessed) will be to freeze individually and keep for our morning green smoothies. Ooh, OK, maybe a blackberry cobbler, too. Warm. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Here are my baby grapes. These vines came with the house, so I have no idea what variety they are nor how sweet to expect them to be. They give me hope, though!