To Plant a Garden

Home sick with a sore throat and cold, sneering at the ugly weather (there's a flood watch for tonight, for crying out loud!), and thinking about greener, sunnier days to come. And gardens. 

Flowers and fruits and veggies. Green and yellow peppers, violets, lillies, daisies, watermelon, tomatoes, and more and more and more. 

I'd like to plant a garden (not right this second, obviously), something I never imagined myself saying, but I actually have no idea how to go about doing so. Of course I can look online and find 300 different ways, but it's curious to me that I've made it this far in life, almost three decades, and I don't know where to begin. 

This isn't a metaphorical garden I'm talking about. I'm talking real garden: dirty hands and knees, bugs (ick), the smell of flora and produce. I'm talking questions like, Do we have a proper place? The right kind of soil? When is the optimal time? Can you grow XYZ in this climate? 

I guess I do know where to start: by recognizing my total lack of knowledge and asking questions. But it still seems odd that something so, well, natural, something I read about and see all around should be such a mystery to me. 

It seems like such a complicated task - to plant things, shield them from the weather and insects, make them grow, harvest and enjoy them - and yet so completely simple. There are probably many things like that: simple, ordinary things that boggle the mind (or at least my mind). 

I'd like to plant and tend a garden, see (literally) the fruits of my labor, feel pride when little seeds turn into something much more, feel a bit of peace being in nature. Maybe this spring I'll find a little patch of earth in the backyard and try my hand at making some good things grow. It can't go any worste than the potted tomato/cucumber/pepper failure of this past summer . . . .