Almost all of the gardening books I read make a point to remind new gardeners (like me) to start small. They say you should clear less space than you think you might want so that maintaining the garden and spotting and fixing setbacks is easy. In too big of a garden, fixing setbacks can be an enormous chore that no one is really committed to taking care of.

Not gonna lie, morale for me got pretty low there a couple weeks ago. I’ve run into a bunch of setbacks after getting off to a really exciting start. In my case, not only did I have too much square footage to effectively defend, but I also had about 80 seedlings that needed love and maintenance and not to be dumped out on my deck (dammit!). It felt like almost every day there was some new setback. Lucky for my garden, this all went down immediately before a multi-day rain storm, so I was able to go read six or seven novels, charge my batteries back up, and finally get back out there yesterday without too much more damage to my patch.

One of the main things keeping me out of my garden was the anti-pest cages that I hacked out of wire mesh. They are ugly and scratch my hands and clothes when I try to work with them or around them. They totally worked to protect the plants, but I got tired of slicing up my hands bending them into shape and quit the project before I had even used up my materials. Plus every time I glanced over at my veggy patch it looked like the federal bureau of prisons had vomited all over it. It was ugly and I didn’t want to spend time in it any more.

But the first thing you have to do to fix a problem is to realize that you’ve got a problem right? My problems were that I was feeling kind of beaten down, my veggie patch was looking like a hell-scape, and trying to keep my soil moist enough to germinate seeds wasn’t always working out.

I haven’t fixed all of these problems yet, but realizing that I was standing in my own way has helped me to get back into the garden, and to invite one of my gardening buddies into the mix to lend a hand, both in the latest project, and in helping me stay energized. I can’t wait to visit her garden and return the favor.

I did take notes of all the stuff that wasn’t working out, although I didn’t blog them at the time, because blegh. But they’re things that I learned from, so I’ll be pushing these out as soon as they start to feel funny. I’m sure that’ll happen eventually.