Gardening with the Black Thumbed Belle

I made the mistake of sharing my first glorious attempt at gardening with the Facebook world about a month ago, so pleased with "day one" of turning away from my black thumb days.

That was on my "day one" gardening high. Like all things we post on Facebook, it painted an unrealistic, only pretty-things-happen-in-my-life picture of my optimistic attempts.

So, since then, I've been having to break the news to many inquiring minds in the weeks that came after that first blissful day of sunshine that my gardening skills had gone slightly downhill since day one. As in, crashed and burned:

Ya. It got real ugly, real fast.

But lately, things have taken a turn for the better, and I decided there are just too many life metaphors to not start blogging about my gardening adventures. Life metaphors are just so irresistible to me.... Those will come later. For now, let's catch up to speed.

After "ze garden" went to hell in a hand basket, I've taken great joy in the wee little victories that have literally made me dance with joy in the middle of the very public community garden. If I wasn't already so mortified by the fact that I had such a miserable, weed-infested lawn patch for a garden amongst all the perfectly manicured ones, the dancing and squealing would have almost been embarrassing. 

Anyways, this is the solitary prized carrot sprout that caused so much joy in its discovery two weekends ago... 

See it?!?! That was after the removal of this thick coating of what I later discovered to be pigweed, which I am quite skilled at growing:

Once the pigweed was all gone, and a few little sprouts were discovered, I called in an expert, level II certified master gardener in order for her to inform me that the rest of that indistinguishable green stuff was this rare and hard to identify species call "grass." 

So that apparently had to go, too.

Square by square, more and more sprouts starting revealing themselves in the lawn!

After several hours of "mowing," a real garden had nearly emerged.

Then, today, to top it all off, I have had one little marigold with three little flowers renew itself, a lone survivor out of a dozen that lost their lives at my hand:

What a trooper!!!

(Even YOU can't kill marigolds, they told me at the greenhouse. Marigolds are practically invincible, they said. I showed them! and killed every one, save this one that battled its way back to life.)

Anyway, because I'm a born Husker, the corn patch is my only area of sustained success. It's not quite "knee high my the Fourth of July," but my Nebraskan genes have been diluted a bit since these mountains stole my heart.

So there you have it... 

Gardening with a black thumb, I've found, is much more gratifying than if I'd been born with a green one, as otherwise I don't think I would enjoy these little victories nearly as much.