Every Saturday morning used to start the same way: coffee in hand, staring at the front yard with a mix of guilt and exhaustion. The lawn had brown patches no amount of watering seemed to fix, the flower beds we’d…
For two years, the side path along our garden was just… dead space. A stretch of gravel between the vegetable beds and the back window that nobody looked at twice, edged with a tangle of squash vines that sprawled flat…
For two summers straight, our backyard was basically a graveyard for good intentions. A patchy stretch of dirt where grass refused to grow, a rusting fire pit ring nobody used, and a folding table that stayed folded because setting it…
For three seasons, I fought my old raised garden beds instead of gardening in them. The wood was warping, one corner had sunk into the mud, and every summer the soil compacted down so hard that my lettuce came up…
The kitchen table is covered in a rainbow of dye stains that somehow made it onto the ceiling fan, the dog’s paws, and your favorite mug, all in the span of about ten minutes. You had a vision of a…
Your kitchen table is dusted in fine white powder, there’s a lump of clay hardening in the shape of nothing in particular, and the “quick, fun weekend project” you promised yourself has turned into an hour of frustrated squishing and…
Your hands are covered in dry, cracking clay dust, there’s a lump of gray sludge stuck under your fingernails, and the “cute little bowl” you were attempting has collapsed into something closer to a deflated balloon. You watched three tutorials,…
The craft bin has been sitting on the kitchen counter for three days, half-open, spilling glitter glue and stray googly eyes onto the mail pile. You promised your kid a “fun fall project” on a rainy Saturday pumpkin wreath, and…
My first real flower bed was, in hindsight, a monument to good intentions and terrible plant choices. I filled it with delicate annuals that needed constant babying: daily watering, deadheading, fussing over every yellowing leaf, and by the time August…
