hippie girl

My mom frequently tells people she does not how she ended up with two hippie children. By the process of elimination, I am one of them. I immediately disqualified my older sister. My sister does not have an ounce of hippie blood in her. Now, I’m not saying she’s high maintenance or anything (ahem), but hippie she is not.

So that just leaves my brother and me. My brother I can see. He’s a blue grass lovin’, tie-dye wearin’, aviator buyin’ fool. Every ounce of blood in that boy is hippie. In fact, I wasn’t even surprised when he brought home a girl last year that was wearing a headband around her head (you know — the wrong way) and wearing a long flowy dress. That’s just so my brother.

 
So I was very taken aback the first time my mother called me a hippie? Me? A hippie? I laugh at you lady. I’ve never seen no Earth lovin’ hippie girl carrying a Coach bag and wearing Tiffany earrings. You must be mistaking me for someone else — because a hippie your daughter is not.

However, then the un-hippie child (my sister) agreed with her. It was quite mind boggling what they thought. They both pictured me with long hair, a flowy dress, and two children eating nothing but organic food.

If that’s what a hippie is, then I guess I am not opposed to being one. In fact, can someone please give me pointers on how to be more of a hippie? I love organic food, long dresses, and long hair. Let’s do this. Hold the two children please — I’m not ready for those.

And you better believe my mom won’t be complaining this summer about her hippie daughter when she gets free tomatoes and zucchini this summer. Mmhm, that’s what I thought.

Many of you asked me yesterday a lot of questions about my garden. To be perfectly honest with you (because I like being honest — it’s the hippie in me), I have no clue what I’m doing. Seriously — I’ll be lucky if these plants make it. Coming from a mother who only kept day lilies outside (because you basically can’t kill them), I can’t necessarily say we are a “green thumb” kind of family. My new little family is more of a brown thumb kind of family. Between my black thumb and the Husband’s green thumb, we kind of make some kind of ugly dirt color. I’m down with that.

 
Many of you asked what kind of soil I got — I have no clue. For real. The Husband built the planter box. It’s a raised bed, that much I know. The Husband got the dirt for me. The Husband spread it for me. Do you see a trend here? The only thing the Husband didn’t do was go buy the plants and stick them in the ground. I did that with my new cute pink gardening gloves while screaming at Charlie not to nibble on the tomato plants. How’s that for organic?

I figured it can’t be too hard. You plant the plants, you water them, you make sure your dog doesn’t eat them. You fertilize (with organic fertilizer might I add) and pull weeds so they don’t steal the nutrients from the plants. Am I missing anything else? Oh yeah, you also get to eat from your backyard. I’m just going to go with the flow and see where the wind blows me (how’s that for a hippie statement?).

 
The first lesson I learned was that you actually get dirty when gardening. Um, gross. I am not one of those girls who enjoys getting dirty as much as I try to convince the Husband that I “don’t mind as long as I’m wearing the right clothes”. I mind, and I also know now why people who have gardens wear those ugly Crocs. Mud is a bit difficult to wash off of running shoes, did you know that? But those Crocs, man — those Crocs would have come clean in five seconds.

I’m just going to sit back and let my garden grow — pretty groovy right?

Peace and love brothers and sisters.

Question: Have you ever grown a garden? Any tips?

Tagged as: garden, growing vegetables, vegetable garden