Just Trying Not to Squelch Her

I hate gardening. I love flowers and color and the thought of fresh vegetables and herbs BUT I still hate gardening. My friends love it, the books I read act like gardening makes you one step closer to God, BUT I still hate gardening. I can understand, figuratively, the joy of "sinking your hands into the earth," "being a part of creation starting," "nurturing a fragile little plant," "creating something beautiful." I'VE TRIED! but to me it just feels hot, full of bugs, a tedious everyday need to go take care of SOMETHING ELSE, and even if I do follow all the right steps, everything I do tends to look like this anyway:

That is what greets you on my porch if you drop by our house. It serves as a constant reminder of last spring, just like every spring before, when I've gone to Home Depot, listened to Jeremiah make fun of me as I spent hundreds of dollars on plants vowing that THIS year would be different. Well, that was my gigantic prize fern from last year...you can see how well I took care of her.

This year, I said, no more. I am not a gardener. I'll try to take care of the wispy little plants that have managed to survive in my garden, and I'm not going to waste all that money...even though I do miss those beautiful, overflowing hanging baskets on our porch :( But then this year, God gave me a curious child. For weeks I've listened to her tell me every day, "Mommy, can we please plant some seeds?! All we need is dirt and water, and they'll grow, I promise! PLEASE!" And on and on it went. Who told her that anyway? Did one of you neighbors do it to spite me :)? Do they talk about crap like that on Sesame Street to guilt us non-gardeners into getting out there and doing it anyway?
I don't know where she heard it, but I couldn't bear to squelch her anymore. Maybe the child is going to have a green thumb. Heck, maybe I can let her plant my flower beds every year :)? She certainly couldn't do any worse than I have.

So, I made the dreaded trip to Home Depot, but instead of spending hundreds of dollars, I only spent about five. I let Pace pick our seeds and this is what she chose:

We took down my hanging baskets (that weren't being used anyway), rounded up a few other planters from various past projects.
And planted to our hearts content. (Mary Aplin nearly gave me a concussion with that rake before the day was over)
Now, a good solid excuse I have for not enjoying gardening is that my yard gets next to no sunshine. There are no fun colorful plants that grow in shade...or at least very few (maybe to get the good ones you have to go spend some real money at a nursery and not Home Depot). To give Pace's plants a chance at life, I've left all these planters in the only spot in our yard that does get sun--THE FRONT YARD. We are lookin' oh so classy with our half clover/half grass yard and our planters strewn about.

But you know what, I can already say that it's worth it, because I walked outside with Pace yesterday to check on the progress of her little project and we found this:

They actually grew!! (I honestly had zero faith that it would work) And Pace asks to go outside and check on them about twenty times a day. Bless her heart...it looks nothing like her mother's in this gardening area.