Gardening is a reflection of life . . .

Ever notice that your garden exposes the emotional place you are in life?  Mine certainly does.
We worked like crazy people preparing the yard for our daughter's wedding. It looked amazing and was perfect for the event. But now, though it's grown and flourished, it looks uncared for, because my heart has left it.

My garden is not your normal size yard.  It is approximately an 1.5 -2 acre peice. Just about the time one side gets done, another garden needs attention.

Life is like gardening . . . it not finished until your are. Constant work, pruning, hoeing, weeding, changing, tweeking, it's never finished. Motivation to work in the yard, is not unlike the motivation to change behaviors.

One must move in the direction of the pain. Right now my garden is painful to look at.
Action steps need to be taken to change that, but until the pain of seeing my garden in such disarray is greater than the pain of weeding, it will remain a mess.

I recently subscribed to a nurition site call Precision Nutrition and the coach said something very profound for me. When asked, "How confident are you that you can do this "thing" I have asked you to do on a scale of 1-10"  He says if the answer is anything less than a 9, reduce the request to a smaller action step and keep doing that until the answer to the question is a 9 or 10.

Today, I will prune the roses outside my patio door.
Gardening one day at at a time, just like recovery and life.
Happy planting . . ..

The truth about me . . .

I have always admired real gardeners. You know the type; everything they touch explodes into fabulous flower or grows taller, or wins prizes at the fair. I am not that gardener. I have been in horticulture for twenty plus years. I know plants. I know how to sell them, organize them in a landscape, prune and propagate them but I do not consider myself a gardener.

When I lived in Oregon I had a beautiful vegetable garden for several years. I was under the delusion that I was pretty good at gardening until I moved to California. Oregon has amazing soils, abundant rainfall and mild temperatures. Anyone can be a gardener in Oregon, but the Central valley of California has some challenges. Its dry most of the summer with temperatures ranging from the mid 90's to over 100 degrees and don't get me started on the bugs. I have spent hours along with my husband creating the perfect raised bed garden that is big enough to feed a small country. Yet I have had three years of a lack luster garden. Hence the name of my blog, The Wanna Be Gardener.

I work for Frantz Garden Center in Hickman, California. It is a beautiful garden center with amazing plants, grown primarily in our wholesale division, Frantz Nursery. . We also have a display garden that include landscape, some hardscape and a wonderful vegetable garden. Do you see where this is heading? I have been given the opportunity to plant the display garden this fall. I have never planted a fall garden but I am hopeful that it will turn out better than my dismal spring/summer garden. Here is my chance to see if I can garden in California in the fall and perhaps my bruised ego will heal and I will be motivated to master my spring/summer garden.

I have a plan. My goal is to blog my successes and failures in hopes that successful gardeners will provide input; that other wanna be gardeners will be encouraged and that my trail garden will explore the pro and cons of both organic and non-organic gardening.

These are real gardens so if you would like to come visit. I am at Frantz Garden Center in Hickman, California. Check out our website. www.frantzgardencenter.com

More to come real soon.