Gardening

As a stay at home mom who lives on a farm, I never expected to absolutely hate gardening.  I don't know why it surprises me, I dislike most things associated with gardening; bugs, heat, dirt under my fingernails, bending/kneeling down...etc...
I guess, when I thought about gardening, I only thought of the things that the garden produces; tomatoes, peppers, squash, broccoli...etc...all of which I love.  But much to my dismay, in order to get those things to grow, you have to...you guessed it... garden.  So, with that admission in mind, I have decided to make this the year that I start to like gardening. I have been avoiding the issue for about the last 5 years. Always making some excuse why I couldn't or shouldn't bother.  But now, I feel like I really need to do this.  While I don't expect to grow to love gardening, I am determined to at least come to not hate it.

I have been working at it for about 10 weeks now and I can tell you that it is not going to be easy to make myself keep it up all season.  I am already bored with the tedium that weeding and pest control brings. And with the disappointment of failed crops.  But, I have learned some things that will make things better and hopefully easier in the future.  Things about pest control and about companion planting.  Pest prevention is going to be the key for me to enjoy gardening. I have discovered that duct tape is ideal for plucking squash bug eggs off the leaves of my zucchini, and that soapy water is lethal to those nasty little bugs.   My next pest control experiment is to put yellow bowls of soapy water under the plants,  The theory being that they will mistake the yellow bowl for a flower and climb right in.  We'll have to see if it really works.