Make Your Garden

"Now is the time to make your garden! Anyone can be a successful gardener at this time of year, and I know of no pleasanter occupation these cold, snowy days than to sit warm and snug by the fire, making garden with a pencil--in a seed catalog. What perfect vegetables we do raise in that way and so many of them!...Best of all, there is not a bug or worm in the whole garden, and the work is so easily done. In imagination we see the plants in our spring garden, all in straight thrifty rows with the fruits of each plant and vine numerous and beautiful as the pictures before us."
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Missouri Ruralist, February 1918

She hit the nail on the head there, I am an excellent gardener in my dreams. I love the idea of a garden...I've never been so fond of the actual work involved in making a garden, though. Although I start out with the best of intentions, my gardens never live up to the beautiful pictures in my imagination.

However, every winter I dream the dreams, buy the magazines and haunt the seed aisles at the local stores. This winter is no exception and I have a spot that is just crying to have a little beautification - my front yard.

So starting in March, I'll begin the Jasper's Cottage garden project and everybody can follow along with me. The yard has good bones, it has a wonderful cottage-y white picket fence and even an arbor. Unfortunately that arbor leads into the dullest, most colorless space of nothing that you've ever seen. I don't have grass, it's all grey gravel with grey scalloped edging around dirt-colored spaces filled with colorless plants. Sounds lovely, right? Let's see if we can change that by the time spring rolls around.