Growing a Garden with Catherine and Phil

Please welcome my friends and Guest Bloggers, Catherine and Phil. They love their little urban garden and I was so happy when they agreed to share about how they grow a Winnipeg garden.


Joyful Planting

During a pandemic, it can be scary; in order to live through these scary times, one should focus on keeping healthy and protect yourself by sanitizing and social distancing. It's not easy as I'm a frontline worker at a Personal Care Home. I have to be extra careful, but in my house, it's hard to do. We try our best to make sure everything is sanitary.

Our home consists of my husband Philippe, my fur babies, Buddy the cat and Bella, the dog and me Catherine. Phil has the green thumb of the family. Phil grew up in the country and worked on a farm as a young teenager. Myself, city girl, I have a little green thumb. I've watched my parents' garden, and they taught me how to care for plants inside and out.

 I would help put seeds in the soil, pick out the weeds, and water the garden every chance I got. However, if there was a bee or wasp around, I'd be running for my life, leaving the water hose running waiting until that bee goes away. I did enjoy watching our plants grow through the years, especially my parent's apple tree.

Phil and I planted a garden since the day we met 13 years ago and through almost ten years of marriage. Anyways, due to the crisis, the world is going through now why not take the time to plant a beautiful life in the garden, it's the best place to spend time with each other.

Phil searched on the internet and found a way to plant seeds in a Ziplock bag. All you need is a tray, spray bottle, scissors, soil, paper towel, tweezers, planting containers and planting seeds.
All you have to do is you take a paper towel that's been cut to the size of the ziplock bag, spray the paper towel lightly with water. Then fold your paper towel in half with the seeds inside and insert it into the Ziplock with delicacy. The next step is to have an area in front of your window that gets the most sunlight and leaving on a flat surface, or you can get a thick string with clothespins hanging it across your window. Let it sit there for 4 to 6 days, checking if the roots are starting to grow.

Then when you notice that the root is growing, use tweezers or your lovely fingers to lightly grab the seed with the root. With caution, plant the seed into 3/4 cup of soil in any plastic or recycle containers of your choice that have holes on the bottom. Dig a little hole in the soil to add your seed with root facing the bottom, cover lightly with soil and spray with water gently over the top. Add the seeds by separating them a couple of millimetres apart.

Then each day in the morning you should continue to spray it with water as it grows. Make sure you put your lovely creation by the window to get sunlight for your garden to grow. It has been a wonderful experience growing our lovely garden every spring.

As time passes, your plants will grow. Once the risk of frost is gone, it is time to transplant your plant into your outside garden. Take your container with your baby plant and move it to the garden.

Dig a hole approximately the same size of the containers and gently remove the plant. Insert the plant with all its wonderful roots into the new hole that you have just dug. It's ok if you take a lot of soil with you as sometimes it's gets stuck to the roots. Once inserted into the new hole in the garden, bring more soil to the new plant to make sure that it's nice and full in the hole. Add water, and enjoy watching your wonderful creation grow.

After a few weeks of watering daily, your plant will grow. With plenty of sunshine, water, love and even some great companionship, your plant will grow big and tall and eventually will create beautiful flowers.

If you are planting flowers, enjoy your beautiful creation with a wide arrangement of colours and, of course, the smell. Flowers can give out lovely aromas, and every flower has a different scent, so make sure to try many different varieties.

If you are planting fruits or vegetables, your flower after a few weeks will slowly start to create a little spot. The petals from the flower will fall, but don't be sad because that little spot that appears will continue to grow and, after some time, will grow into a fruit or vegetable. You can slowly watch all your hard work grow into some wonderful food that you can soon enjoy.

After a few weeks of watering daily, your plant will grow. With plenty of sunshine, water, love and even some great companionship, your plant will grow big and tall and eventually will create beautiful flowers.

Once the fruit or vegetables are fully grown, you can finally harvest. Remove with care and enjoy the fruit of your labour.

Sometimes your plant will die, and sometimes it won't grow, but don't be disappointed because that happens to all of us.

All plants have different aspects to them that help them grow better. We learn a little more every year on how to plant better, and with patience, love and care, we will slowly become wonderful gardeners, and that will help us go through life.




Story and Photography by
Catherine Molina-Ross and Philippe Ross

HAWMC Day 27 The Good and the Bad

 5 Challenges & 5 Small Victories. 
Make a list of the 5 most difficult parts of your health focus. Make another top 5 list for the little, good things (small victories) that keep you going.

 

Hi! My name is Alicia and I am guest blogging for my mom today. I am a 27-year-old woman with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder).  I was officially diagnosed as a six year old when I started grade one, but we did know I had ADHD before that.  I wanted to write on this particular prompt because many of the challenges with ADHD can also be positives. It really depends on what my mood is at the time or how I choose to look at a situation. Something that may be very good in some circumstances, like being aware of everything around me, can really help me at work and in emergency situations. At the same time it makes it very hard whenever I am asked to concentrate on some kinds of work or even pay attention while trying to have a conversation with a friend in a busy restaurant.

Good Things

1.  I am aware of lots of things at the same time. ADHD makes me very close to being a multi-tasker.
2. Sometimes I can hyper focus and give all of my attention to a single item of interest.  Give me a math challenge or a game and I have an advantage.
3. I have lots of energy and I am always on the go.
4. I learned at a young age to be an advocate for my own needs as a earning disabled girl and once I laws able to advocate for myself I began advocating for others and has turned into something I am very passionate about.
5. Learning about ADHD helped me learn about brain function, which in turn helped with learning Psychology and Human Development courses in university.

 Challenges

1.  I am constantly aware of so many distractions that it is hard to function. I even needed to take exams in an isolated room to eliminate distractions
2. When I am over focused I really am not aware of what is going on around me and I do things like walk into traffic while daydreaming.
3. I am constantly fidgeting and the fidgeting annoys other people. I am constantly picking things up in my hands and I am not even aware that I am handing them.
4. Attention Deficit Disorder is an invisible disorder and people sometimes think I am just being weird, rude or stupid. They pick up that something is wrong but don’t automatically assume it is a disability. Even if I decide to tell someone I have ADHD I get reaction such as “No you can’t possibly have that”,  “but you are too smart to have that”,  “ADHD? What is that?”  or “I thought that was just something kids have not adults”.
5. Schools are not set up for people with ADHD. You spend so much time stuck sitting down and having to pay attention for long periods of time, not to mention test taking. The expectation is that we will all learn something the same way at the same way and my brain developed in a different way than the average student. I wasn’t ready at the same time as other students and teachers did not acknowledge my earning differences. There has not been enough progress in the 21 years since I was officially diagnosed.