Four-side view

My First Gardening Experience

Ah, to this day I still remember my first gardening experience. It was

such a disaster that I didn’t think I would ever want to garden again. I
almost decided to turn my casual hobby into the most rage-inducing topic
you could possibly bring up to me.

It all started a few weeks after I moved in to my first house. I was

excited just to have my own grass to mow, since I had been in apartments and condos for quite a while. In between plans to paint walls and renovate

the inside to exactly how I like, I thought it would be a good idea to
start a fruit garden so that I could have some fresh produce and put my

yard to use. At that point I didn’t really know anything at all about

gardening. But still in my spunky youthful years, I decided I didn’t need
help. How hard could it be to start a garden and grow stuff? After all, it

happens in nature all the time and nobody even has to do anything.

I already had a grassless patch in my yard where it looked like the

previous owner had attempted a garden. But any attempt they had made
turned out to be an utter travesty. The area was full of rocks and weeds,

with no signs of any agreeable plants. I spent several hours of work
spread over several days to clear out the entire area, leaving nothing but

dirt. At that point, however, I didn’t realize the difference between
“dirt” and “soil”. I was dealing with barren, hard, nutritionless, and

unforgiving land.

My First Tree

Almost everyone’s first tree experience has some embarrassing events. Nobody can be an expert right away; we all make mistakes that sometimes haunt us for years afterwards. Some of us make worse mistakes than others, though. I think that if there was an award for being the most naïve person to ever attempt growing a tree, I would win.

When I decided to plant a tree of my own, I had the perfect spot in mind. There was a gap between my house and my fence of about 5 feet. It was probably the least traveled area of my whole lawn, and I thought it could use something to spice it up. Maybe if I provided some lovely shade, it would become more used by my family. I envisioned a little picnic paradise in the shade, where my family could go just to be with each other and nature. Boy was I wrong.

I decided on a nice apple tree. Despite the risk of apples falling on our heads, I thought it would be a treat to sit under the shade and munch on delicious home grown apples. Just the thought of this romantic, poignant activity was enough to make me drive my self to the nursery and purchase the first apple tree in sight. I didn’t know enough about trees to look at the roots or any of the signs that it could be an unhealthy tree. I spent the required amount of money and had the tree delivered right to my house.