Summer gardening

I was looking for a job for the summer that would allow me to be outside as much as possible and add to my studying of plants and sustainable living, so I got a job at a local plant nursery. It turned out perfect because all the people I worked with were super chill and friendly and since I had been learning mostly about growing vegetables this gave me the chance to learn more about trees and flowering perennials and annuals. Louis, my manager in the perennial department, was really into teaching me everything he knows about the plants and very patient with me. I felt lucky that I got to work with him cause I learned so much in the short time that I worked there. Hopefully I can come back next summer and work there for a bit. Since it was only a seasonal job they let me go in the beginning of July, but I ended up meeting people who helped me find some landscaping jobs for the rest of the summer.

My first landscaping project, even though it was really small, was a little patch in front of Mr. Kaplan's house. I chose to put in mostly natives and tried to pick out some perennials that bloom in different times of the year. Hopefully it looks nice when all the things start blooming next year.

I met a kewl group of people who'd started a community garden off 29 in Fairfax and spent a bunch of time planting, watering and harvesting veggies out there. Also, just sitting around the fire pit at night cooking mostly from the gardens and chatting about "the problems of the world today" lol, great times. Every so often we'd do some landscaping when we realized we still needed some money to get by.


Also, through them we went out to a CSA garden in Catlett, VA to help out Roots, a friend. They had some of the tastiest green beans I'd ever had and mostly grew rare heirloom varieties of their tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, sunflowers, peppers...(I could go on all day...but I won't). They probably had 100 beds, about 50 ft long. Which meant weeding these organic beds took all day for 1 bed. After weeding, or even in the middle of it, we'd break for a dip in the river next to the house and just float in the calm water. Then we'd sit around the fire and throw together some ITOH sip and sometimes get to hear our Jamaican friend work on his new reggae beats. Such a chill place to just loose track of time :)
There's one of the tomato beds with basil that we weeded for 2 afternoons because there were so many weeds.







For the days that I spent more than 8 hrs indoors (including to sleep) I could feel it in my mood, I just wanted to be outside anywhere, in nature or the the garden. I don't know where this feeling has been hiding for all these years. I'm so addicted to getting all the Vitamin D I can, feeling the earth (not pavement) beneath me, and hearing nature all around me.