Things I like - vertical garden

I like this!

It's a French riddling rack transformed into a vertical garden for lettuces, arugula, Swiss chard, mustard, strawberries and herbs by Anne Phillips. (the riddling rack played a crucial role in the making of champagne for hundreds of years. Before corking, bottles are stored upside down to allow unwanted sediment to collect in the neck)

I love the idea of gardening. We used to have a H-U-G-E set-up in Wyoming. Really it was a little much and always, always a work in progress and just when the goods were getting tasty, we moved. We tried gardening when we first moved to MO at our apartment; raised boxes on the back patio. We mixed that soil with tender love, but those pesky deer wouldn't take NO for an answer so we rested our green thumbs for awhile.

We tried last summer to resurrect the thumb, but our schedules really put the kibosh on the party, so we are trying to breath new life this season. My mom is coming for a visit and if my husband has a green thumb, she wears the color as an accessory. She always wants to do a "little yard project" when she visits and who am I to say no to such free and enthusiastic labor? Last year she was out digging in the rain while I was in trying to get a handle on nursing a fussy 4 day old baby. [This is the woman who encouraged and helped arrange for my husband to blow in cellulose insulation into our attic while I was recovering from a c-section in the hospital. I do not know how they pulled it off because my hubby was with me every night ...sometimes very late, but he was there. I did come home to a LARGE patch in the ceiling where Joel fell through - that must have been a site for my mom as she was sitting reading to Riley and suddenly smash - there were legs ...dangling and kicking about.]


Mom's been prepped that "not much has been done" to those beds, but she is geared up for a new project and I will actually have the energy to help her dig - although, she is relentless. Frankly, I am better at picking out, planting the flowers and serving the refreshments, but I will be there knee deep in the thick of mud with my shovel. Just call me Frannie...the farmer that is.

All that to say is that if our garden doesn't really get off the ground this year, I think I like this vertical garden idea - I just have no idea where I'd get a riddling rack.