By contributing writer Tabitha
Spring is in the air! The world warms up, and everyone starts thinking about…gardening! Well, actually, allergies, but gardening is a close second.
It’s worth doing
Recently, I was with a group of women learning about sprouts for nutritional purposes. One thing the expert said really stuck with me. She said, “I know you’ve heard it said that if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. I’m here to say, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing.” She went on to explain how it’s great to do something often to learn what’s best for you and how to make it work, and even the effort is teaching you something.
What went through my mind was,
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth making mistakes, making messes, and starting over.”
This totally applies to gardening. We’ve planted gardens in Ohio, Texas, and now Missouri. Before that we were still thinking, well, if it’s worth doing, we probably should do it right. This led to us not doing it at all in many places we’ve lived.
The years we have had a garden, we’ve learned tremendously from them. We’ve learned what to grow and what not to grow, how to prevent pests, and what we really like. We’ve learned things NOT to do again. We’ve learned what the kids can help with, and what’s better to do ourselves. We’ve learned that sometimes it’s good to get anything at all from a garden!
We’ve tried buying plants and growing from seeds. We’ve even started seeds indoors, and those turned out both good and bad!
Just like homeschooling
Overall, we agree that gardening is worth doing. We’ve made messes and mistakes, and we are thankful we can start over every year!
Just like homeschooling and parenting and life!
I know homeschooling is worth doing for my family. We’ve learned so much. Some years, though, I’m thankful it’s time to drop everything, take a break, and start fresh with a new school year.
We make mistakes and try something new. We make messes daily and learn from cleaning them up! We learn together.
While I know we’re improving every year, we’re definitely not at anything near perfection. Of course, doing it “right” could be different for every family. But every year we do more things right!
Our oldest son, and one of the jars of pickle relish we made last summer.
This past year was the first year we had enough produce from our garden that we needed to preserve some of it! We made pickles, relish, canned tomatoes and salsa… so happy!
This is also the first year that we have a graduate! We declare that we have finished this portion of our homeschooling journey and that our oldest son has gone as far with us as his primary teachers as he possibly can.
Both of them are results of hard work, lots of experimentation, lots of mistakes and mess making, and I’m so proud.
Here’s to many more years of gardening. Here’s to many more years of homeschooling (the youngest is 1 year old!). Here’s to many more years of learning!
Kate Harrison says
Hey!
I have come across your blog and read about Lessons Learned From My Gardening. Great stuff!
I look forward to more insightful articles from you! 🙂 Nice going!
Kind regards,
Kate
Tabitha says
Thank you! I love the Happy Housewife 🙂 There are so many great things to learn here.