Thank you, Grandma!

I received my Cook's Garden seed catalog yesterday, which shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.

Because I had not been thinking about a garden.

Or rather, every time I thought about it, I got depressed. As there's no safe place to actually plant here. In the dirt. Or should I say, sand.

So I've been either grumbling inside or ignoring my desire to garden altogether, thinking, I'll never get to have a real garden again.

We did plan on building raised beds with sealed bottoms. Then we had to downsize that plan to just a few large potted tomatoes and some lettuce, as the raised bed plans were made before winter's slow business, and hubby's upcoming 3rd carpal tunnel surgery, eradicated the budget for such things.

A few pots. Can't tell you how much that (didn't) thrill me!

I Vant to Dig in Zee Dirt.

I want to grow vegetables, plant roses, grow lavender, and herbs.

But just yesterday, I remembered grandma's little house in Queens, NY, and how there were always 3 or 4 wood bushel baskets stacked in the back corner of the driveway, for piling the leaves into, which, every autumn, fell from the large Maple in front of the house, filling up the driveway.

And which we kids (self and 3 younger brothers) would *rake them into a huge pile, jump into them, flattening the pile out; repeat from * until the leaves were too crumbled to jump into without harming ourselves.

So, this morning, I prepared to attack the Conundrum of the Cheap Raised Beds, once again.

I Googled Bushel Baskets, after first checking the local Craigslist. I mean, what could they possibly cost?

Oooh! 24 full-size (17-18" diameter and 12" deep!) wood bushel baskets would cost less than one, 4' x 4' plastic raised bed, which I wouldn't want, anyway. Plastic, schmastic.

Thank you, Grandma!

In that case, I need to start collecting and making compost, and start some seeds on the kitchen sill...

And need to find an easy-to-use, yet secure way to compost, which won't involve plopping down $100-$120 for a plastic, tumbling composter, but which will keep out the critters from stealing my kitchen scraps.

Tomatoes (German heirloom, if at all possible), lettuce, spinach, snow peas, Italian bush beans, those little round zucchini - come to mama!