We live in an apartment. We have 13 months left on our lease. Do you know what this means? No yard.
We’ve been making do with a balcony garden, which has been a great learning experience, but it’s quite limiting in terms of space.
But God is good, and He blessed us with a wonderful landlady who is letting us use the yard below our second floor apartment for gardening. How often does that happen?
I’m convinced that God is behind our desire for land, for debt-free living, for self-sustainability. And I’m convinced that He is blessing us in the meantime, while we build up a down payment and search for the perfect parcel of property, by teaching us how to live sustainably, by allowing us to learn from others’ wisdom (and their mistakes along the way), by giving us the rare opportunity to garden at our apartment while we patiently wait.
We hauled wood chips from my parents’ neighbors’ property to our apartment in our dump truck (oh yes—that’s a whole nother post).
I spent my Sunday afternoon tilling up the really quite poor soil where we want our vegetable garden (it was quite sandy and rocky), adding some fresh composted soil and aged horse manure—both free!—and covering the whole area in a few inches of woodchips.
Our goal here is to create a Back to Eden garden (the film is worth watching). We’ve been putting this idea into practice with our balcony garden, and it’s been pretty successful, but it’s really best with an actual plot instead of pots.
And now we wait. Yes, even amidst these blessings, God is teaching us patience. Come spring, the soil should be much better suited to growing food, and we’ll hopefully have a fabulous vegetable garden!