After eating organic veggies from my CSA farm share, and visiting a couple of elementary school vegetable gardens, and being inspired by my sister-in-law Liza (click here, here and here for those blogs), I got the urge to see if I could grow stuff. It hit me pretty hard, so for my birthday and Mother's Day and my 24th anniversary combined, I gave myself a box of dirt. Here's the long view of the finished plot, and here's how we got to that point:

I dinged up a company called Miami Kitchen Gardens. (The husband is handy but he's very slow and I was in a rush.) Bright on a Tuesday morning, Julio Vila started hauling in the dirt. By night Julio is a chef, but by day, he helps install organic gardens.

Dennis Finneran, who owns Miami Kitchen Gardens, charges $480 for a raised cedar bed that's 8 feet by 4 feet, filled with organic soil. But because it's the off season for Miami, I got a $50 discount. I'm a sucker for a discount.

The dirt in my garden is organic -- half cow manure and half composted yard waste from the county dump.

You've got to have at least five hours of direct sunlight a day to grow vegetables, and Dennis decided that the only place I had a remote chance was in my front yard.

After the box was complete, Dennis and Julio drove away. I read gardening books for the next three days. Here in summer in the subtropics, you're supposed to have the best luck with herbs. Early Saturday morning, the Hub and I started planting.

According to the seed packet, your nasturtiums (an edile flower) will sprout faster if you brush them well with a fingernail file. This was the most tedious part of the entire operation!

The gardening books all said that very small gardens should be based on the "square foot gardening" approach. So we made a grid with string and thumb tacks.

When everything got planted I felt pretty proud. I've been checking the plants about three times a day ever since. Think any of it is going to take root? I guess we'll find out!