How green was my laundry...
When I moved back home to take care of my parents, the one thing I was really pretty psyched about was getting to do gardening stuff with my father. I love the feeling of working on growing things and I enjoy composting as a full contact sport. I love enriching my land and encouraging a wide range of pretty native ground covers and edible plants to grow up where they already want to grow.
I had two giant ruts in the front yard where a utility truck had to pull in last year. I filled them with compost and transplanted the wild mint that wants to grow in the garden by the house. Along with that I shifted some of the other wild plants that like to grow, and threw in a bunch of cabbage and broccoli seeds that were laying around. In a few months I had gotten rid of the ruts and the front yard smelled amazing whenever I mowed.
My container plants started out doing well but, due to other obligations and the fact that it rained twice this summer, the plants didn't do great and I wasn't left feeling like it was a huge success.
I'd attempted to grow some companion plants in one garden, but the critters ate the sunflower seeds before they could get started, only two of the bean plants wanted to be involved with the project, and the amaranth (perhaps trying to make up for the no-shows) filled the entire plot with beautiful giant stalks with fierce red flowers and seed heads. Definitely doing amaranth again. Spreading the seeds MUCH farther apart.
I was so busy this year that my composting went entirely abandoned and the only planting venture that was a complete success was my whimsical attempt at hydroponic gardening in my kitchen. I did a set of herbs first and that worked wonderfully. When the plants got too big, I transplanted them to dirt pots and they grew the summer outside. Then I grew a mini jalapeno plant in my hydroponic grower and that was MASSIVELY productive. We had fresh peppers with dinner three times a week for six weeks and then I had enough to make a whole quart of pickled slices that will serve us for another few months.
As it's getting colder, I've shifted to some Japanese salad greens and that has been a lovely addition to the super simple dinners I've been making from my dried bean and rice supplies since we don't feel like going shopping at all.
Over the past couple of months I was not able to keep up with tending my potted herbs and they have all died, except the ginger. The ginger looks pretty sad and keeps trying to make me sit with it and listen to stories about the good old days.
Instead of feeling like crap because I failed to maintain my herbs into the winter, I started looking at learning more about growing the herbs and plants I like in pots. I already have pots and seeds and stuff, but I only have one window with a Southern exposure and Spouse really isn't happy about the shelving unit I've placed in front of that window to try and grow my plants. Once I added up the physical cost of starting and planting and tending the potted plants, plus the cost of daily watering and clean up, I was feeling pretty frustrated.
Then I thought, “Why don't I shift completely to hydroponics for herb and salad production for the winter? I've kept my small unit running perfectly all this time and used everything that I grew in it. Why not get a larger one for the laundry room?”
And I did. It seems expensive at startup, but when I budget in my energy and physical capacity to do plant care, it gets a lot cheaper. It's a lot like my robot vacuum. When I consider my ability to do the things that are important to me, tools that seem like vanity novelties are reasonable investments. Honestly, they become fairly frugal investments.
It's strange how many of the things in my life that are otherwise coded as luxuries really function as staples of healthy living. I remember how my grandmother told me stories about her first electric washtub with the power wringer on it. How that advancement was so exciting for her and she felt so fancy being able to do her laundry with only having to feed the wet clothes into the wringer and then catch them into the basket before taking them out to the line for drying. I remember my father telling me about how happy he was to get an electric iron so that he could just do the ironing without having to keep stopping to wait for the iron to heat up on the stove before doing the next bit. I'm not sure that my robot vacuum and hydroponic gardens are any different.
Just like with a mobility aid, instrumental activities of daily living aids are great things. If they help you, it's cool to use them. You don't have to prove to anybody else that you deserve it, or that you're worth it. Use a cane. Use a robot vacuum. Figure out what makes your life better and make it happen.