Gardening During The Pandemic

Like everyone else, COVID fatigue has been hitting my home like a ton of bricks. All my husband wants to do is walk around Best Buy, I could go for an afternoon working out of a Starbucks, and all we end up doing is eating junk food on our couch while binging Hawaii Five-O. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an introvert and I love to spend my days at home but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss changing it up.

Recently, I took up gardening indoors. I created this cute little shelf in my dining room of container friendly vegetables and herbs (spinach, kale, tomatoes, onions, etc). Every morning I would spend 10 to 15 minutes pruning and watering until my small garden started to become the highlight of my day.

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Eventually the plants got too big to fit inside and our family cat, Charlie, started to eat any flowers that popped up. I spent a lot of time trying to find a good substitute location but our house doesn’t get a lot of constant sunlight like the indoor grow lights set up inside our house. I quickly realized I had to improvise if I was going to get my plants a happy home. And there, in the middle of the local Lowes, I figured it out.

I would create my own planters box for the railing of my deck, the only place that gets fairly consistent sunlight. With the help of my father, I created this small box and re-homed all my baby plants. It’s not that you should build a planters box, but when I finished, I realized I had made an outdoor happy zone. The box was at eye level when I sat under our patio umbrella to write or work so I always had a view of the flowers or my growing cucumber plants.

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So there, next to my planters box, I had created a small ‘Starbucks” for me to escape to when work was rough or I had writer’s block. Almost every plant made it outside except for my mini cherry tomato plant – which still lives happily on the top shelf inside away from hungry kitties!