Our latest Create Harmony podcast episode profiles our latest outdoor project, crafting a raised bed garden. From the challenges of leveling the earth to the triumph of planting herbs you'll get the inside scoop. These endeavors aren't just about cultivating land; they're about sowing seeds of tranquility and reaping glimmers of joy.
Then, I invite you to lean in to your child-like mind by listening to an excerpt from "The Secret Garden". Whether you've never potted a plant or you're a seasoned gardener, this episode is a call to embrace the rebirth of spring and discover the secret gardens waiting in our own backyards. Join me for uplifting stories and find your unique connection with the natural wonders that await just outside your door.
Our latest Create Harmony podcast episode profiles our latest outdoor project, crafting a raised bed garden. From the challenges of leveling the earth to the triumph of planting herbs you'll get the inside scoop. These endeavors aren't just about cultivating land; they're about sowing seeds of tranquility and reaping glimmers of joy.
Then, I invite you to lean in to your child-like mind by listening to an excerpt from "The Secret Garden". Whether you've never potted a plant or you're a seasoned gardener, this episode is a call to embrace the rebirth of spring and discover the secret gardens waiting in our own backyards. Join me for uplifting stories and find your unique connection with the natural wonders that await just outside your door.
To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast, and this is a place where we set an intentional rhythm.
Speaker 1:
We're all about savoring life's blessings, and we like to learn how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. So if you like to be creative and fun, you'll probably find a whole lot here that you love, and if you want to learn more about how to bring more stillness and gratitude into your life, there's a place for you here as well. In this place, we'll take a few minutes to celebrate those everyday joys and remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us. The topics we focus on are ways to raise your well-being, ways to refresh your life and ways to refocus you on peace and joy. So I am your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 72. So, as our spring season is unfolding here I live in the South, I live in North Carolina and as our spring season is unfolding, we have been focusing on glimmers. So these are those small everyday moments of joy and peace throughout your day. Glimmers make us feel safe, they make us feel calm, and this is the opposite of what we experience when we have a trigger. So if you want to understand the concept of glimmers, think about how you feel, feel when you experience a trigger, and then flip that around and you will have the feeling of a glimmer. So I shared a glimmer last week from my own life. I talked about how we transformed our sunroom into a more plant-friendly, more garden-y space. So if you missed that episode, you can go back and check that out and hear more about that. Now, as our sunroom has been coming together, we've been creating a garden effect on the inside of our house. We've also had another project going on here and that has been working on a garden on the outside of our house. So here's what I mean by that.
Speaker 1:
I've shared before that I love to plant herbs. I love to plant things, and when springtime rolls around, I'm all mean by that. I've shared before that I love to plant herbs, I love to plant things, and when springtime rolls around, I'm all about planting something. I'm not really a gardener. Throughout the year I don't love going out into the main part of our yard and landscaping and planting things, but I love container gardening. So in our other house we moved last fall I've shared that before I had an herb garden, which was a box of different kinds of herbs, and I had two raised beds that I planted stuff in. Now, as gardens go, I really kept it simple. I mean, we're talking about cucumber plants and a cherry tomato. I don't even grow large-sized tomatoes, because it's a little bit more involved, so let's not convert me into a master gardener involved. So let's not convert me into a master gardener. But the bottom line is I like to grow things in a raised bed.
Speaker 1:
So since we moved last fall, this spring, it's time to set up a new raised bed garden area at my new house. So here's how that went. I bought a kit. I went online, I found this kit, I watched the videos of how to put it together and it seemed so simple and I was just sure that I was going to be able to click that thing together, no problem. But when the day came to start the project, I'm going to have to confess to you it was slightly more complicated than I imagined. Because the thing is getting it all level, that's the trick. Because the thing is getting it all level, that's the trick.
Speaker 1:
And we have a fairly flat space in the back corner of our yard. This corner gets a lot of sun and I thought this is the perfect place to put the container garden. So the previous owner of our house raised bees. They had beehives right back in that back corner, but the bees moved on to their new house and at this point we don't have any plans for bees. So we had our landscaper come and clear out all the stuff that was left over from beekeeping and we were ready to start and it just so happened that my parents were visiting the weekend.
Speaker 1:
We began the project, so my mom and I went out there to get the ground ready. We put some stakes, we put some string, we tried to get it straight, we tried to create a squared up frame. And that was a little easier said than done. We measured and we remeasured. Finally we called in my husband, who has a degree in engineering, and he helped us really get it started. He helped us make a plan and get the boards level and just kind of get the first level in first ground level in place. And once we got those foundational pieces in place, it was more like the video.
Speaker 1:
It was easier to click the boxes together and create raised beds, but the next step was it was time to get soil. So when I chose my kit, when I was going online and choosing my kit. I decided to choose a slightly larger box than I had had in my other house because I might want to branch out and learn to grow more things. I might want to grow full-size tomatoes in this house and the instruction video recommended that you put cardboard from the. You know the kit came in boxes, so you just put that cardboard down in the bottom so that fills in some, and we had some small sticks and branches that we had trimmed from our shrubs and that fills in some. But then you've got to put a lot of top soil. I mean a lot. It took a lot of soil, so I got some help getting the soil delivered and I added that to the box and then we added like compost type soil to the top.
Speaker 1:
And then it was time for plants. So I went to one of our local garden centers and got some of the plants that I need. I got a variety of herbs and some beets and some strawberries and some lettuces and just a few starter things. I also enjoy planting dahlias because they grow these big, beautiful blooms. So I got the dahlias in and we were on our way and the kit that I bought had an animal barrier that you were supposed to add once you got the kit up and running and that was supposed to keep deer and my dog and things out. But I decided when I got it planted that I'm going to hold on the animal barrier. I didn't add that yet, so we'll see. If I end up getting things eaten by critters, then I'm going to have to add the animal barrier at that point. But we've got some of the plants in. This is where it stands right now. We've got some of the things I've bought have been planted, but I still have a few more things to buy and I'm going to try to get to that this weekend get some tomatoes and some cucumbers and a few more herbs and then it will be all planted and I will take lots of pictures and I will add that to my newsletter and to my Instagram so you can be paying attention to that as well.
Speaker 1:
And, as I said last week, hopefully these projects that I'm doing and that I'm describing to you are a way for you to take a glimmer from my life and branch it out into your life. Hopefully you will find something that you can do and get excited about as I have gotten excited about my garden projects and share that with someone else, and your glimmer might be something very, very different. I said that before. Your thing might not be gardening, it might not be plants at all, it might be knitting or puzzles, or it might be sports, it might be pickleball, it might be all sorts of things, but you can find those glimmers in your life, all around you, and you can feel inspired by those, and you can inspire others. Glimmer is going out to help other people, help someone older with their yard work or something like that. That's how you're going to spread glimmers in your life. So now it's time for us to turn our attention towards our closing, and for today we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to have a closing that invites you to remember your childlike wonder and think about what it was like to be a child.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to read an excerpt from the Secret Garden book. It's a book that a lot of us read as a child, and I'm just going to read this to you and you just take this moment. A step into nature and back towards childhood. So it goes like this the garden was the most mysterious place anyone could imagine. Its walls were covered with bare branches. Wintry brown grass covered the ground. There were clumps of bare bushes and little trees. Mary knew that there were rose plants like she had seen in India. There were other kinds of trees. The climbing rose canes hung down like curtains and the vines had grown together, making little bridges between the trees. The tangle of branches and vines made the garden seem so mysterious. It was very quiet. Even the robin in the treetop didn't move In a whisper. She said. I am the first person to speak in this place in 10 years.
Speaker 1:
She walked over the brown grass, stopping under one of the vine bridges. She wondered if they were all quite dead. She hoped not Even so. So she was inside the garden, a world of her own at last. The sun was shining and the sky looked even bluer here. The robin flitted from one tree to the next. He chirped busily, telling her about the garden. She forgot to feel lonely. She kept thinking how beautiful it would be if the garden came alive.
Speaker 1:
She began to skip around the garden, taking it all in. There were little paths in the grass, stone benches and moss-covered urns. Then she noticed a flowerbed full of dried grass with little green shoots sticking out of the ground. She remembered what Ben had told her. There are things growing here, she exclaimed. It isn't quite dead. She looked about carefully. She found many more pale green shoots among the old beds.
Speaker 1:
Although she had never been a gardener, she thought she could help tend the little plants. She found a sharp stick. With great care, she dug away the grass around a few plants. She dug up some little white things that looked like onions and then replanted them. When she had cleared a space, she said now the plants can breathe. She decided to do more each day until she had done them all. So that's our excerpt from the Secret Garden today, and hopefully that was a moment of childlike whimsy and wonder in your day and reminding you to turn towards nature as a source of joy. We'll be back next week with some more glimmers. We'll be talking about happy and good, joyful things this spring and hope you will join us then. And until next time, peace, thank you.