Thursday morning we headed out to the garden to harvest some ingredients for our breakfast. In the back garden, Jeff casually said “let’s go harvest some kale out front”, so we all headed that way. I was looking out at the mountains, watching the world around me wake up, when suddenly I did a double take. What?! There were six blueberry plants in the ground that weren’t there when I went to sleep the night before. I looked at Jeff, I was so surprised I couldn’t speak. “When did you?…..”, my sentence hung in the air. Jeff had gone out at 5 that morning, while Bracken and I were sleeping and planted six blueberry plants to surprise us. I looked at him with so much adoration in my eyes. What he did meant so much to me. For so many reasons. Because sometimes we feel our dreams for this place happen so slowly and projects get piled up and we get discouraged. Because sometimes our homesteading plans get put on hold so we can focus on getting bills paid. Because sometimes there’s so much to do we don’t even know where to begin. Because sometimes we wonder if those blueberries will ever get put in the ground.
Jeff stood there with a huge smile on his face while he watched my surprise. The way he looked at me, I knew he wanted to make all our dreams come true. It wasn’t so much what he had done, but the way I could feel the warmth of his heart and his intention to bring me joy. That’s what meant so much to me.
Seeing one more dream a reality made us feel all our other dreams are possible too.
You might remember awhile ago we started digging up a plant bed out front. I mentioned it in the bottom of this post (and you can see some “before” pictures.) I wrote:
“Our most recent project is this. We had a long bed lined with rocks that Jeff made before I moved in. It was planted with a variety of flowers and hostas. Beautiful, but all non-edible and taking up prime garden space (that we need more of.) We decided we’re going to transplant all the flowers and hostas to other locations. This spot we want to use for blueberries. We both worked on pulling out the rocks along the edge, then Jeff dug up the grass. We put the chunks of sod in an area where we wanted some grass. We’re widening this bed, enough to fit blueberries, then we’ll put the rocks back. I’ll show pictures when we’re finished. You’d think it’d be a pretty quick project, but they always end up taking longer than we expect.”
Slowly but surely we’ve worked on this project. Little bits at the end of the day, here and there. Jeff hauled up load after heavy load of compost from the old goat house.
And now, seeing a few more plants out of pots and in the ground is a good feeling.
Remember all those blueberry plants we traded for, which I wrote about in this post? We’ve gotten a few other plants as gifts since then. We currently have 12 blueberry plants in the ground and 15 blueberries in pots that still need to be planted.
……….And the thought of picking blueberries right outside our door? Yes please!
You can see the six blueberry plants below in the rock-lined bed.
As you can see, we are home on a Saturday. We didn’t go to market today because it’s the weekend of The Eugene Celebration and the few times we went to market on that day the whole place was empty and we didn’t sell a thing. Jeff was asked begged to participate in the beard and mustache parade and contest, which I thought was pretty funny. Instead, we are home working. Here’s to a productive day and *hopefully* a little time in the garden at the end of it too.
Enjoy your Saturday, friends.
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