[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, I'm Sarah, and I'm Megan.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're two women in our 40s who live in different states and have a lot of different interests between us.
[SPEAKER_00]: On this show, we talk about all the midlife lady leisure pursuits we're enjoying at this stage of life, like travel hobbies, food, wellness, style, and more.
[SPEAKER_01]: And today we're gonna be sharing our adventures in gardening, what's going well, what we're doing, what we're not doing, I can't wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is gonna be so fun, and as always, today's episode is brought to you by our exclusive season sponsor and a longtime partner of ours, Fionic Shoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Megan, I don't wear heels very much anymore, and I'm sure our listeners are probably in the same boat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And Megan, I think we would both agree that vionic styles look so cute.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, even the heels, the wedges, the cute summer sandals, they are so comfortable, does not even feel like wearing a dress shoe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well Sarah, you know I was telling you that every dressy event I've gone to in the past like three years, I have worn Vionic heels, including my own wedding and my own wedding reception to different pairs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Also, we have a special page set up where you can see our favorite vionic styles.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you to Vionic for sponsoring this episode and Sarah, let's dive into talking about gardening.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought we could just start with the breast hacks.
[SPEAKER_01]: What kind of gardening we each do?
[SPEAKER_01]: What kind of gardens we have?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like is it a raised bed or right in the ground?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or pots?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll go first on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of my edible plants are in pots on the back deck.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reasons for that are many, we live on a lot of acreage, so when I moved into this house, I assumed, oh, I'd have a big garden someplace on the property, but we also have so much wildlife.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the ground, the ground kind of goes from really, really clay to really, really sandy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as we'll get into later, I'm just kind of lazy on the setup part and I didn't want to have to battle with either wildlife or soil so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me having something just right in the back deck is perfect because I'm out there all the time anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like four steps from my kitchen so I can easily walk outside to water it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can check it on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: multiple times the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like never at a site ever at a mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just always right in front of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've also got a perennial garden in the front yard.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is mostly for looks, but I do occasionally harvest herbs from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I have a few things out there that are medicinal and I've made medicines from them and I've made keys from them, but mostly I just kind of let that go and look pretty.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd actually like to have
[SPEAKER_01]: More of like a straight-up herbal tea garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't gotten to that point yet, and I don't think This garden would necessarily be for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a feeling I'd probably just do more of that in pots on the back deck Yeah, but that's what I've got right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So pots on the back deck with all of my Vegetables and then right up right in the ground up front.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have this Sort of what I'm going for is sort of a wild cottagey look.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's gonna take a while to get there
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like that is one of the things I am learning in my midlife gardening explorations is that things just take a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like, you know, you don't on day one have this like very organized chaos is kind of what I'm looking for.
[SPEAKER_01]: That takes years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes decades to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so we have a raised bed situation that my husband
[SPEAKER_00]: He designed and built it himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the biggest construction woodworking project he's ever done and he did a great job.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one big race bed and it's shaped like a capital letter E. So if you picture a long side with three arms sticking out and he wanted that and they're quite raised.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a cool thing is you don't have to bend over for our midlife lady spinal health.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because it's in that capital E shape, you can walk between the three arms
[SPEAKER_00]: all parts of the bed without ever having to like reach if that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, there are trellises along the long spine of the E as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where climbing things go.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like huge props to Brian for.
[SPEAKER_00]: conceiving of and designing and building this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have said that a couple years ago, he was 95% of the gardening interest in our marriage, and now it's maybe almost 50, 50, 60, 40.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing a lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have more available time, and I've just learned slowly from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like I would say this summer, we're really,
[SPEAKER_00]: out there about the same amount, we have this, you know, I have more opinions and more investment than I ever had, which is really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the main thing, and that is a kitchen garden, essentially.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get into what's growing in there, but that's a raised bed kitchen garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also have quite a few potted.
[SPEAKER_00]: decorative succulents and things around the patio and in the front, but I, and then we have some fruit trees, but I think when I think of fruit trees.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when I think of gardening in the way that we're probably going to talk about it today, the raised beds are the main
[SPEAKER_00]: event but but we do our fruit trees we do care for they are part of our definitely part of our edible gardening life and then a lot of my potted succulents are purely like my own dabbling and we're actually going to do a whole episode about house plants and I almost consider those more in the house plant family even though they are on the back patio but they feel more like house plant out they're like outdoor house plants to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so that is gonna be fascinating because when I was thinking about that episode that we're gonna do next, yesterday, I was like, how do you really define a house plant?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it because it's in your house?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it that you're tending something that is meant to be sort of contain?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you don't know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not a kitchen garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a kitchen garden, it's just a sacred plant.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's decorate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, to me, it feels like more, it's more in the aesthetic than the utility.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm sure there's some overlap we could find.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, so it, like, my, my, my pretty old garden out front really is 97%.
[SPEAKER_01]: aesthetics, but I would never consider that a house plant because it's what it's just growing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, yeah, I like landscaping and that's actually leads me to the next sort of side question I was going to say to you, I think you actually have a landscape or a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a book.
[SPEAKER_01]: So would you consider any of the stuff that your landscape or touches, maybe shrubbery, that's not really gardening, it's just, it's almost like,
[SPEAKER_01]: home design or something that he's interesting, like overlapping categories of living things that are in our yards.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and let me say this, if I did not have a landscaper caring for
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, shrubs, grass, some of those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would probably consider gardening if I were doing it myself, because I would be digging, planting, pruning, I'm not.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really aspire to have a more native plant inspired landscape over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my guess is that as that happens, I will consider that more like gardening.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I scattered some California poppy seeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the winter and my puppies came up that felt like gardening, but that was on my landscape that was like in my in a wild part of our yard So I do think there's a ton of overlap here to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels different because I have hired out the more manicured sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah like you said landscape design and maintenance that is currently being outsourced so it does not feel like it fulfills the midlife lady leisure pursuit of framing is what you could look at it which is nice that could be a piece of suit as well so yeah sometimes I pick things from it and put a jar on my table yeah right well that counts um and I forgot to mention our fruit trees we have cherries peaches pears
[SPEAKER_01]: And nectarines, although I don't think we've gotten really any nectarines off our nectarine tree in the last two years, and that is sort of adjacent because it's a crop we harvest from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like the routine is completely different.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of pruning branches like in the late winter or early spring and then kind of I'll fertilize it every now and then and then basically wait for the fruit to grow and then collect the fruit and that's about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: from gardening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree, and we have just since you named yours, we have two orange trees, and then we have avocado, lemon lime, apricot, nectarine, fig.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's where we are right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Varying degrees of actual produce and success on all those, but that's what we've got.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, okay, this is a good time to name some other things you're growing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So tell me what you've
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the raised beds this summer, a ton of strawberries which I could talk for a really long time about how fun it's been to have really well-producing strawberry plants, but I'll just stay strawberries and then we can follow up if needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strawberries, blackberries, herbs like mint, sage, parsley, chives, onions,
[SPEAKER_00]: Tomatoes that aren't they're not there yet, but we have a lot of tomatoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of different peppers Brian, I don't even know all the peppers, but we have Seranos and poblanos.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think jalapenos may be some peppers that I don't even pay attention to.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a bunch of squash and zucchini.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got cucumbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a it's an abundant ear and the exciting thing is
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of it was planted, but some of it is either carried over from last year or it volunteered itself from the compost, which is crazy and I can talk more about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, this is the first summer that I can remember this many surprises of like, wait, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be like, did you plant this and Brian's like, I don't think so anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's, it's, it's a little wild this year, but I'm loving it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, okay, so I love hearing about how abundant your garden is because mine is also this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have two years in a row now have had a vacation, basically, it's not really a vacation.
[SPEAKER_01]: A working vacation up north for the first two weeks of July.
[SPEAKER_01]: And last year when I went, I felt like the garden wasn't really doing much when I left.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, okay, and then when I got home, will was taking care of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I got home, of course, there was stuff happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: This year, I think things really kicked off early because it was already looking kind of crazy when I left.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm actually recording this from up north.
[SPEAKER_01]: Owen has been sending me pictures because he's taking care of it right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, should I harvest?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's going crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll be home in two days and I think I'm going to walk into a full-on.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh like a like a big harvest and then I can't wait.
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually in July I mean it's not like things in Michigan aren't growing in abundant in July they are but the way I garden I don't get a big jump on the season.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not starting a whole bunch of seeds inside right so my gardens usually aren't really peaking until later and I think they're peaking like right now so yeah it's going to be interesting but-
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a couple different kinds of cherry tomatoes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the sorts of tomatoes I really like eating.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a big slicer person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't do much with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm on a sandwich, but I remember our whole episode about how good a really good sandwich is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they grow a little bit better in a container situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a couple of different kinds of peppers, some like heirloomy kind of, you know, you wouldn't see these in the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a lot thinner flesh.
[SPEAKER_01]: and like the bell pepper ones do a couple of more purple and there's like green inside but purple on the outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've also got Shishito peppers which did very well last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very very well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tomateo is also did amazingly last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact last year my Tomateo plant did so well it shadowed everything else and so I remember stuff didn't grow so I kind of moved that around.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got lots of herbs, lettuces, spinach,
[SPEAKER_01]: Swiss chard, green beans, peas, hmm, I feel like there's a couple other things and they're gonna not think you know, oh yeah, cucumbers and I think a pumpkin, maybe and the funny thing is I must not have marked that one because I was looking down at this pot and I thought that looks like a pumpkin stem.
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I actually used my app to take a picture of it and I thought I don't remember
[SPEAKER_01]: planting a pumpkin.
[SPEAKER_01]: So do I have like a miss?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, do I have a seed that was made labeled or did something volunteer or yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know, maybe last year I saved a pumpkin seed and planted it and then forgot about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember purchasing pumpkin seeds.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's put it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in my perennial garden, it's stuff like,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, brown-eyed Susan, lavender, rudebeckia, basket-flower, echinacea, comb-flower, things that grow really well and easily here, kind of anywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's just a whole mix of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, some things, I honestly don't remember what they are either.
[SPEAKER_01]: I try to do the native plant thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to do unless you have a really good nursery to
[SPEAKER_01]: Locate those things at I get very confused when I just go to like the big nurseries and I'll be googling like is X, Y, Z Native to Michigan and the answer is often like well not really, but you know, it was introduced two hundred years ago and right It's been growing there a long time and really what I'm going for is I don't want anything that's
[SPEAKER_01]: negative or invasive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, that's what I've kind of learned just very in my light Googling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a difference between native and non-invasive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like non-invasive better than invasive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not causing harm to the low end habitat.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then for us out here also, what like water wise or drought resistant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those might not be native, but they if they're not causing problems and their low water usage, that's also good.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think there's a lot to parse there depending on what you're There's new ones and I want something that's going to grow well in our climate But that it might have come from England or something It'll still grow well in my climate.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so that's been interesting and I know we're going to talk a little bit later about our approach as to gardening But I just want to say if anyone's listening to this and they can't keep a plant alive I've been that person and I sometimes still am that person and
[SPEAKER_01]: Same every year I learn a little bit more and same and every year I have something I think is going to do great that doesn't and every year I have a surprise like something that I thought wouldn't do well and does so a lot of it It's not up to us, you know a lot of it is just going with that with that flow and Yeah, so if it probably sounds like a lot, but it's it's more It's more reasonable and
[SPEAKER_01]: and also I didn't get there all at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that's why this is kind of a perfect midlife lady leisure topic, because it truly, I think gardening resists perfectionism, and it's like other sort of hobbies creative outlets where you can get instant gratification of like, I don't know, I guess I can't think of an example necessarily, but I think gardening matches up very nicely
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of like have a little faith and see what happens and iterate and dabble and it's great for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well that's a good segue into our next question and that is how has your garden grown and by that I mean like gotten bigger or gotten, you know, or maybe not, maybe it's shrunk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically the question is how is your approach changing from where you started to where you
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, I started all of this in 2023.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was when I had just moved into this house.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I invested definitely the bulk of my time and money that year, especially with the perennials, because I was starting from just like a sort of triangle of mulch.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all I had was sort of this idea of kind of what I wanted it to look like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, that storybook, cottage, you look.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and the mulch was on top of this cardboard that hadn't even, like, biodegraded all the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was having to, like, use a post-hole digger to get, like, kind of hunched through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't really know how to amend the soil.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a lot of trial and error, and I decided to start from plants that year, because otherwise I just could not conceptualize.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted it to look
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of haphazard, but I wanted there to be some intention behind that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I wanted the colors to do what I wanted the colors to do in the sizes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started from plants and it's kind of an expensive way to start.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was three years ago, most of those plants because it's perennial, they come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, so last year, like your one was just, what am I even doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now the nice thing about mulching is there was not a lot of weeding, which I don't like to do a whole story about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But um, year two, it looked tidy but a little tame, I guess, like it was there, but it wasn't really popping off.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this year, it's, it's really popping off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, all I have to do is really just replace a couple of plants every year that didn't come back for whatever reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, it's gotten a lot cheaper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's become a lot more satisfying.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now I can walk out and see that sort of riot of color and texture, which I was wanting and could kind of visualize in your one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't get there until your three.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have heard that that is very common with perennial gardens.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then with the container gardens, sort of the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I invested the bulk of the money, at least in thinking, your one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a lot of the containers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Facebook Marketplace to few, I got some gifted to me, and I'm not going for really pretty containers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a mess of containers on my back deck, which I like that look.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first year, it was kind of in one corner.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I did, oh, I don't know, a few herbs and maybe it's made a plan, a pepper plant, and then year two, I kind of, I probably doubled the size, and it went really well last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this year I decided to work with what was working,
[SPEAKER_01]: and just expanded it again twice again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now the entire deck is covered with containers.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a little more careful, or I guess more knowledgeable about where I position those containers, but my whole back deck gets a lot of sun, and most of the things I'm growing, needful sun, so I'm not super concerned about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just like working with what works.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example,
[SPEAKER_01]: I mostly use plants that I buy at the seedling sale from our local CSA, so the farm where I get our CSA box also does a seedling sale and the seedlings are like three bucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're organic plants.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know they're going to work well in my region because they're 20 minutes for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've had amazing luck with their plants.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, it makes a lot more sense to do that than to try to start everything from seed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do have a few things I start from seed.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm also, I'm interested in what works.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that's what I want to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I had the time, or if I was like ahead of it, enough to be starting seeds indoors, like in mass, I could see myself getting there, but right now, those seedlings totally work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of, I feel like it's all just been moving in a very steady direction of growth every year, but I might just stop here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you touched on the thing where like year one, it's a lot of work with less reward and a few years in you're not having to put as much upfront money or upfront work and you're getting more rewards So that that those scales tips so nicely if you just kind of stick with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I guess how has it grown or approach changed?
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of touched on it earlier, but a big change is just my involvement at all, because the gardening truly started out as Brian's hobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, if I go back to past houses we've lived in and past kind of backyard gardening that we've dabbled in, it was always Brian's thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would get excited about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd take a picture of a bunch of tomatoes he grew or I'd get excited about using the food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And but I wasn't really at all, it was his thing that I was supportive of and thought it was pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think over the last few years, I have had the more time and space to get involved myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Often I think,
[SPEAKER_00]: Brian is still the one who gets excited about planting in the spring.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he loves the kind of clean slate of like plotting out a grid and to set and go he loves going to the garden center or the plant store.
[SPEAKER_00]: He loves like hauling big bags of new dirt or mulch or doing the compost.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we still have a tag team like I would say the initial inspiration is
[SPEAKER_00]: pop out there, pick some things, see what's going on, kind of keep him informed about what I'm seeing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, I would say a lot of it is the share of interest in the share of work has shifted over the last few years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I also touched on it at the beginning, but I feel like this year, there's so much happening out there that feels like it's...
[SPEAKER_00]: a carryover from last year and in many ways it is because, you know, we don't freeze here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are plants that Brian's pepper plants now are very mature.
[SPEAKER_00]: The strawberries are in the blackberries.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those plants are a carryover from last season.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some new things were planted this season, but it just feels like we're just seeing the, the literal fruits of past year's labor more than, more than ever before.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not surprising that we're like in something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that does happen occasionally.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have very different approaches to a lot of things in the work world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you were saying that Brian is great at the plotting it all out and the going and buying big begs of dirt or whatever, that's the part I'm the least good at.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the part I find the most overwhelming, but Eric would be great at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just like you in that I'm great at the, the puddering part.
[SPEAKER_01]: the ongoing the nurturing it's the mom part yeah yeah it's like the part of me that just wants to tend so i guess that leads perfectly into the next question which is what kind of gardener personality do you have and how does that i guess mom tendency kind of i play into that well
[SPEAKER_00]: The most dominant aspect of my edible garden personality, I will keep it on the edible, is that I really like to use what we harvest and cook it and eat it, or maybe not cook it, maybe just slice it and eat it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've joked maybe even on the podcast before, but I've definitely joked privately to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Brian, the joy he gets in it is not actually that.
[SPEAKER_00]: it doesn't really matter to him if the stuff goes to waste, if it goes back in the compost, if it, if he grows a whole kind of squash that's like basically inedible and to me, I'm like, okay, what can we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can we use this?
[SPEAKER_00]: So my fragality and my
[SPEAKER_00]: my love of using what we have and getting creative with what we have is a big part of my gardening, the edible gardening personality.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is one piece of it and I guess you would just call that like, yeah, like, living off the land and using what we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though I am a planner and very organized in many pursuits, I think because I came to this via Brian, I'm actually pretty like, I'm okay that it's pretty chaotic out there, I'm not overly fussy or perfectionistic when we talk about houseplants another time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those aspects of my personality may become out a little bit more with my houseplants, but in the garden, here's what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: bonus, I was just gonna say it's like it's like a little treat.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a treat.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like magic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like I mean the strawberries I hinted at it before but the past two or three years we've gotten like if we got four strawberries
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the course of a few weeks it would be like we'd be like taking pictures of them and sharing and now We have a legitimate strawberry patch of like picking a bullfold that just feels like that's so cool It feels like magic to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it all feels like upside and and leisure to go to the core of our show.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like it's the best side of what could maybe for you be a rather utilitarian personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, approach to things like, how is this going to work, you know, is this worth is the juice worth?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: On this and something about that for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: for you, for gardening, it's like all the best parts of that because there is like the element of surprise, the element of just gratitude, like just being so grateful that the ground gives us these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I could totally see all of that and it's that resourcefulness
[SPEAKER_01]: That it allows you to tap into that I think is really the fun part of gardening too.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, would it is this saving me money on my grocery bill.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe a little you know now that I'm several years in there are there's probably a month where I really don't have to buy even at the farmer's market.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't need what they have to offer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And probably, because I'm also not pouring a whole bunch of money in the upfront anymore, it probably is saving us a little bit of money, but when you start factoring in the time, you know, because a little bit the other direction, but it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does not, that's not the point.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's another, it's that feeling of satisfaction because you knew you could do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that it was available to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, you hear a lot about lazy gardeners and it's probably not surprising that I consider myself a pretty lazy gardener, but
[SPEAKER_01]: Not like, I'm not like somebody who's just letting it all go crazy and there's weeds everywhere and then like whatever I happen to find is great.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually pretty routine oriented about the way I garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't want to do a whole lot of hard sweaty work after the first day.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will put it else at a side like two full days where I am grungy and dirty and sweaty and I'm, you know, digging and pulling out weeds and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then after that, I don't really want to do that anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to, you know, like, pluck leaves off, stand there with the watering can or the hose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, harvest a little bit here, harvest a little bit there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we said, I really love to putter.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think of myself, like, I think I would be a really good forager and a really bad farmer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if we had to cut back, yeah, a few hundred meters and I had to choose which one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of going out a little at a time and tending little patches here and there or, you know, finding things and bringing, finding things and plucking them and bringing them in.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm great at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not great with like, like, the hard physical labor every day stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just don't really want to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, um, yeah, that might make me lazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but I also do think too that there's
[SPEAKER_01]: like I'm not very precise either.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I go out with seeds, I'm literally going to be scattering seeds.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not good at finding the perfect size hole.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not really great at
[SPEAKER_01]: visualizing what something might look like later.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost more like if I could start from a plant, then that plant makes sense to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can put it where I need it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I can just deal with literally what's in front of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even that's really what I'm circling around.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I'm really good at dealing with whatever actually is in front of me at any given moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not always great at planning six months out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, it's very hypothetical at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's why your containers have been such a success, too, is because it is so close and so literal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not going down to plow the fields or...
[SPEAKER_00]: have to imagine what the seeds are going to do in six months.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to calculate, like, how much fertilizer I'm going to need to grow, you know, my crop.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, I can any questions I have.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing it on such a small scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can just deal with as they come up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Megan, first of all, I think,
[SPEAKER_00]: We should put some photos in the show notes for this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that we mentioned any links, but we could definitely show some photo evidence of our gardening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then next episode, we are gonna talk about houseplants, which is a nice little companion to this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm excited because that is something I did zero dabbling in until about five years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I really enjoy my houseplants.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're gonna bring the gardening conversation inside for next week.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sarah, I think we really need to see some pictures of your strawberry plants because that's something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I got five strawberries this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just decided, this is silly.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not worth the pot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and that's where I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says a couple of years until this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, everyone, we'll just a reminder that you can find our expanded episode story with those photos and some links on Substack at midlife ladyleisurepresuits.substack.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's also where you're going to find the special page we have set up with some of our favorite vionic styles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, use that promo code midlife at vionicshues.com for 15% off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being here, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk to you soon.