Perseverance

CW playing in my 1st garden. Yes, I grew that honeydew!

I am currently experiencing a major setback with one of my favorite hobbies, my garden. After two years of successful and productive summer gardens, I have nothing but dirt outside. I won’t get into details about what’s been going on, but I will focus on how disappointed I am. It bothers me so much, that I hate to talk about my garden or anyone else’s garden. I hate taking the trash out, because then I have to walk by the desolate ground. It’s a huge failure, and I hate failing. But it’s time to stop wallowing in my personal pity-party and get back out in the dirt. This past week, I spent time “working the land” as I like to call it. Really, I was just tilling it with a metal rake, and then flooding the garden with a lot of water. I was working to get it back to a good starting point before I begin again. Sunday morning, I replanted. This is my third time planting since March. *sigh* So depressing…so much work and nothing to show for it! Anyways, it’s been replanted, and I’ve been spending a lot of time making sure the ground isn’t drying out. {This may have been one of many problems this season.} Now I’m optimistic. I feel good about this replanting. It’s difficult to pick yourself up after failure and trying again.

BW staring at the 2 lone squash plants.

Cloth diapering for me has been a lot like my garden. I’ve had good experiences and have also faced a setback. My washing machine was broken for quite some time, and it took me and Mr. GBE awhile to figure out what the problem was. While the machine was broken, it took forever to wash diapers. I’m talking 4-5 hours. I dreaded wash day. Some of it was inexperience: not using enough soap, using too much & not rinsing enough, and forgetting to pre-rinse. But the main culprit was not enough water! I would take buckets of water and pour them into the washer during the pre-rinse, wash cycle, and rinse cycle. It was insanely time consuming. It was unbelievably frustrating. *Ack* Looking back, the only thing that kept me going was my stubbornness to make cloth diapers work. I just loved them so much, even with all the work I had to do. Thank goodness Mr. GBE realized this was crazy to spend so much time washing diapers. He watched me do laundry one weekend and called the repair man as soon as they opened on Monday. Once my machine was fixed, my wash routine was so simple. No sitting around and waiting for the right time to add water in the cycles. I felt liberated by my free time! I’m so glad I stuck it out during the rotten time. Wash routines are meant to be simple!

I’ll be discussing wash routines next, as well as keeping you all updated on my garden. For my local followers, we used Authorized Technical Services {520.903.141} to repair our washer. And for my gardening buddies, I’m working with Westwind Seeds to rehab my patch of dirt. Neither one has asked me to pass along word of their businesses. I am just pleased with both, so I thought I’d like to share with you all.

~~Tonya~~