Gardening

Between our large yard and Uganda's fertile soil (Eggplant grows as a weed. Seriously.), it was hard to resist the idea to start a garden outside our house.

We decided to start with plants and flowers first, because they are readily available in town. If it works well, I might venture into vegetables.

We went to a lady who sells plants near the hospital and picked out the types we wanted, then picked the best-looking one of each type. Once I see how they take, I will come back for more. Of course, once I had picked all the plants, paid her USh 10,000 ($5) and packed the plants in a box, we tried to hop on the Mate to go home, and it broke! The starter pedal just clean broke. (More on that later) So I took a boda home.

We started by choosing a patch of grass to use for the garden and breaking it up with a hoe, then pulling up all the roots.





After a lot of hacking and pulling, the ground was finally prepared.



I had left the plants we bought just inside the front gate, but when I went to get them, they were missing! Recently our security guard had his bike and radio stolen while he was on duty (yes, you read that correctly), so I assumed that they had come back for my plants. But why would anyone steal plants?
As it turns out, the same security guard had assumed that the plants belonged to our neighbor (a mzungu who works with me) and had brought them to her house.

So once that was cleared up and the plants were back in our possession, we were ready to plant. We created the border for the garden using empty wine bottles. The smaller area of the garden had poorer soil than the larger area, so we avoided it for now. We had started a compost pile, so in a couple of weeks I will mix the compost into that side.

We planted the plants we had bought, and put some limestone in for prettiness, and poured lots of water.





I'll be in South Africa for the next two weeks, but I'm excited to see how the garden will be doing by the time i get back.