boxing back the front

One of the best things about having one of us stay home is that we don’t always have to make decisions out of convenience but rather get to find ways to save money by putting in a little extra effort to make or reuse things ourselves. One way in which we have done so is by investing in a substantial garden from which we can pull fruits and veggies for at least four months of the year (I know four months probably sounds pathetic but this is Colorado, after all). This is nice because gardening also happens to be one of Mack’s life passions—something that he throws himself into fully without hesitation or reserve. Usually, we spend our summers embarking on our semi-annual pilgrimage to Kentucky, but with a few recent developments in our family’s living situation, we didn’t feel the need to do so this year. This has left our summer plans wide open in a way that we have yet to experience since moving to Colorado—in eight years, we had never really spent a full summer here. And because of that, a garden was something that we’d never really been able to achieve (since June is such a crucial month for growing here and that’s usually when we would be gone). As Colorado readers already know, the soil out here isn’t necessarily conducive to growing a lot of product in a short amount of time, and coaxing even a modest yield out of in-ground plants seems to take an amount diligence far surpassing that necessary even to get my toddler to eat. So it should go without saying that nothing requiring that much effort could possibly be worth it, and any respectable home-gardener around here will tell you that above-the-ground is the way to go. For my east-coast and southern friends out there, this means that here in Colorado, we buy our dirt at the store. We started by digging down about six inches below where we wanted the surrounding mulch to come up in the bed alongside where the boxes were going to go. Then, Mack hammered in the stakes for the four corners of the western-most box. Here is a picture where you can easily see the corner stakes that we hammered into the ground and then built everything else off of:

But we must have hit rock or something because the far southwestern stake got stuck with about three feet still sticking up in the air. After nearly an entire afternoon of frustrated pounding, Mack decided that a three-foot-tall garden box might not be such a bad idea, in terms of our tomato crop and maintaining his sanity. I personally thought it would look weird to have three-foot-tall garden box sticking up randomly in the air, and so the idea was born to build a second-level tier around the outside of the taller inner box, to make it all more proportional and Roman-looking; because the idea involved more planting, building, power tools, and general digging in the dirt, Mack took little convincing.

Here’s a picture of what the tiered corner looked like (never mind what is going on in the background):

Of course, our limited income makes the economic benefit of growing our own edible plants an added bonus, and it was important to us to maximize our return by spending as little as possible on the overhead. You see a lot of nice-looking and bountiful gardens that probably cost more than a whole summer of trips to Whole Foods (never mind a Costco membership) to get up and running. Once again, we decided that pallets were the way to go—they would provide cheap lumber, after all (and my definition of cheap is really free). Mack had to spend about 100 hours at the dump busting up pallets into their individual panels, which he loved. But after doing some research Mack realized that it can be very hard on the wood to sustain multiple waterings year in and year out, and he didn’t want to have to keep fortifying the thing over and over again, so we decided to go ahead and purchase some ¾” plywood, which we covered in plastic sheeting. This will prevent the side panels from bowing out from water damage after a couple of seasons, and instead allow the wood panels from the pallets to really serve as just a façade. This is basically what you are going for on the inside:

You can also see that there are horizontal braces running the length of the plywood. On the larger box we added an additional vertical post in the middle. All of this lumber came from the dump (read: free). The plastic sheeting was one of our larger expenses, at about $10 for the three-mile-long roll, but we will have plenty to use for slip-and-slides throughout the summer, so win-win-win, I think. In this picture, you can see the plastic sheeting covering the plywood panels on the inside a little more easily (Mack just used a staple gun and wrapped the plywood panels like a present):

For the southeastern corner we just made a single-tier box in line with the proportions of the larger western box (Roman, again). Then, Mack had the absolutely genius idea of finishing the edges, corners, and borders with 2” trim, which we purchased for about $7. This also allowed Mack to use the miter feature on his chop saw, which is always an event worth celebrating in the Holly household. Note his particularly fine craftsmanship here:

And here are some pictures of Mack looking hot and lining up the corners:

And here’s the finished version with the trim (you can see that this again is the smaller of the two):

We coated everything in a clear poly to protect against weathering, but the best part is that the inside is completely protected by the plastic sheeting so if any of the outermost panels become damaged all we have to do is replace them. Overall, we have planted flowers, tomatoes, and herbs in these boxes, which are south-facing and add a much-needed addition to our modest crop. It’s also kind of convenient and nice to just walk right out the front door and grab whatever herbs I need while I am cooking.

Because the backyard is so far away.

Happy gardening, everyone.

~Amy

marathons and mommy mistakes

I was jogging around Lake Loveland yesterday, one of my favorite local runs. It took me six months after giving birth to my daughter to get back to my pre-pregnancy workout routine. I was the kind of new mom for whom the eight weeks of recovery my doctor ordered felt like a life sentence. I thought as soon as I was given the all-clear I'd be back to my morning runs, starting with two miles, then three, then working my way up until my legs and lungs were back in shape. I even considered signing up for the Colorado Marathon in May, just five months after she was born.

Let me pause here to allow space for your hysterical laughter.

Thinking back on those aspirations, all I can do is laugh. Hard. That marathon quickly turned into a half-marathon, then to a 5k, then a weekly walk around the baseball fields at Centennial Park. I learned that it wasn't about getting my legs and lungs back in shape, but rather a whole other set of muscles, muscles I hadn't known existed until that night in December when I pushed a nearly seven-pound human girl out of my body.

All of this got me thinking about the expectations I had for myself before my daughter was born and the kind of mom I actually turned out to be. One of the first baby items that I purchased shortly into my pregnancy was a top-of-the-line (read: very expensive) jogging stroller. I really thought I would be the kind of mother who you would see running my infant all over town, the kind who would whip myself back into shape in a mere matter of weeks.

Things didn't exactly happen the way I had expected. Turns out, being a mom is harder than I thought.

As moms, especially first-time moms, I think it's common to set up expectations for ourselves. As we struggle to form this new identity, often as some kind of consolation for our quickly retreating youth, we try to envision a perfect version of ourselves moving forward. A kind of super-mom who always gives 110 percent, who never cuts corners, does everything not just the right way, but the best way. For me, that meant a natural, drug-free childbirth, at least one full year of breastfeeding, cloth diapers, daily exercise, home-cooked baby food, never fighting with my husband, a baby who sleeps all night long on her back, etc. (insert your ideal baby/mom image here). But so far, I have failed to meet nearly all of these expectations, with the only exception being cloth diapering, which I actually recommend, as long as you don't mind washing poop off of your hands. But these expectations and failures are only the beginning. Beyond this, I have since learned that there are other failures I've had as a mother that I never would have expected. Things I had completely taken for granted before have now become the biggest failures, things I never expected I would be able to possibly fail at.

I expected I would be the kind of mother who would return phone calls from family and friends. I expected to be able to remember to feed my dog. I expected to not dress my daughter in pink every day and assign to her a gender identity at a young age and I expected not to baby talk all of my sentences, even those in everyday conversation with adults. I expected to at least do some laundry, or at least not to use every surface in the house to wipe my daughter's spit up, including curtains, couch cushions, the dog, and so on. I expected to read a story before bed every night, to be willing to turn off the TV (it never occurred to me that limiting screen time also meant that I might have to miss some of my favorite shows). I expected to not shout obscenities in the middle of the night or throw pacifiers across the room. These are the expectations I never would have expected I would fail to meet.

I expected to sleep at least a little bit, or to ever have sex again. Pause again here for your hysterical laughter.

The fact is, what we used to consider normal has become the ideal. It's a perfect day if I can get the dishwasher unloaded, if my daughter doesn't sit in her dirty diapers for more than a few minutes, and if I can pay my husband at least some attention. It's a perfect day if I don't run out of formula or wipes or accidentally leave the back door open over night. Does that make me a bad mother? Does that make me not the perfect mother? When I look at my daughter I see a very different version of life than I expected when I was pregnant. She doesn't get an hour of reading time every day, she doesn't live in a sterile, germ-free environment. She won't be breastfed until she's seven and she probably came into this world in a paralytic haze. But what I do see is a happy baby. A baby who feels safe and loved and confident that her parents are always around.

We finally made it all the way around the lake. Five miles in six months. The old version of myself would have been disappointed. But the mom in me doesn't have time for disappointment. I've learned that my expectations were all wrong, that being a good mom isn't about what you read in magazines or see on the internet. I've learned that sometimes there are no matching socks, and you're just not going to be able to get all of that sunscreen rubbed in. That sometimes it's enough just to have a bedtime routine at all and a properly installed car seat. I've learned that I already have everything I need, strapped safely and perfectly into my (albeit very expensive) stroller. That, for now, is good enough for me.

loving it while it lasts

I recently participated in a discussion on a friend's Facebook page. She was relating a conversation she overheard in the coffee shop on her college campus, in which a young woman bemoaned the weight gain of her best friend, who had become "so fat" she had begun to wear a size medium.  My friend, a once-again freshman who averages a decade of seniority over most of her classmates, had remarked that she was grateful to not be 18 anymore, to be beyond the stage of skin-deep friendship that comes with a transient, childless existence.

                I think it's an important issue, the tendency of women to succumb to fulfilling the stereotypes of a culture that refuses to judge us on anything other than our appearances (not hyperbole—just Google "Miss America Pageant"). This kind of commentary, unacceptable at any age, is all too common in the media and our everyday lives. But I'm not feminist. In fact, I've always prided myself on not being a feminist. I like it when my husband does things for me, opens doors and carries bags, and I even let him pay my bills once in a while. But in this new role I've been given as a mother of a daughter, a little baby daughter who still is presumably young enough to be molded and taught things, I can't help but wonder how and how early we learn to do this. How young are we when we are taught these things? And how can I teach her?

                The answer to the first question is clear on a Monday morning at story time at the Loveland Public Library. Mostly girls, the audience and participants comprise a who's who of local fashion role models under two feet tall. I'm still adjusting to the shock that the baby I had thought for nine months was surely a boy came out to be a girl, and I'll be the first to admit that dressing my daughter has become one of the unexpected joys of motherhood for me. There's just nothing more fun to do with a baby girl than to dress her up in cute little clothes. Why should we care about the message it sends to our daughters when some of their earliest social interactions are preceded by a significant amount of fussing over the way they look? Aren't the matching polka dot tutus worth it? Aren't the leather jeans and cowboy boots? I've seen a necklace on a baby and thought it was adorable. And then there are the tiny pink sparkly Tom's shoes small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. I'll say it one more time to let the cuteness sink in: pink sparkly Tom'ses small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. In a world of sequined headbands, puffy shoulders, ruffled butts, and teddy-bear-eared hoods, doesn't the adorableness of it all outweigh any permanent scars we may be inflicting on our yet impressionable children?

               The answer to question two is a little more troubling. As moms, we want to give our kids the tools to deal with adversity. We want to teach them how to cope with the way the world works. Should I teach my little girl how to judge and be judged? Should I remind her that her best friend has really chunked up in the last few months, or warn her of the dangers of being friends with an eighteen-month-old who wears a 2T? Should I point out that the bald look is very last-season and so a hat is probably the best choice and that she should have done more tummy time last summer because now she’s going to have to run a few laps around the yard before lunch? Should I not use words like "pretty," "beautiful," and "cute" when I'm talking to her over breakfast or getting our nails done? Along with that, should I avoid objectifying other children by Googling things like "hipster babies" (if you haven't done this yet I highly suggest you devote to yourself the 15 minutes of pure joy and amazement it will bring)? Or is there a better way? Should we instead teach them to love their bodies while it lasts, because once their own kids are born they had better have something else to fall back on, if you know what I mean?  Should we tell them, over and over, how beautiful they are? Because seeing is believing means one thing but when you hear it and know it, it becomes a part of who you are. That's what's so great about story time at the library—every little girl is beautiful in her own way. The little girls don't notice one another's outfits, only the other moms do (we'll leave the psychology of how and why moms try to impress each other through their offspring for another day). After all, is it really so bad that tiny humans are adorable and that we celebrate that, that we fall in love with our babies based, in part, on how they look? Leave the scarring and emotional analytics for a later time, once your kids start to get older and lose some of their cuteness. Luckily, I won't have that problem; I'm the mother of the most beautiful girl in the world.

An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the June 2014 issue of The Fourth Street Chronicle, Loveland, Colorado.