the most thoughtful of christmas presents

If you want to show your love for someone, build them a veggie garden. That's what my family did for me last year as a surprise and I still get choked up thinking about it.

While Chris, Bassie and I were away on holidays last Christmas, my mum, dad, elder sister, brother-in-law, five-year-old niece and two-year-old nephew secretly built us a veggie garden in a neglected patch of our back yard. My sister is a natural green thumb and she wanted us to experience the simple glee of growing food with little Bassie like she does with her cherubs. 

When we returned from our holiday and I first stumbled across our magic garden, I couldn't believe my eyes. There it stood - as if it had sprouted from the dirt - pretty as a picture. It was full of mint, thyme, sage, basil, eggplants, green beans, baby tomatoes and a chilli bush. There were pink flowers dotted all around and the veggie name tags were written in my mum's beautiful calligraphy handwriting. Apparently the littlies had helped count out the screws that held the bed together. I felt so loved.

Sadly, I soon killed our garden with kindness (I think I may have overfertilised it). After its second planting, our resident possums ate every green morsel in one sitting. Its third planting got flooded out by rain. But finally, with a new net and lots of attention, I am proud to say our garden is starting to flourish. 

Bassie and I love spending time near our veggie patch in the afternoons. We potter about pretending we know what we're doing. While I water the patch and pluck out weeds and fallen tree bark, Bassie keeps very busy - poking holes in the soil with his chubby fingers, making mud puddles at my feet, sticking his hand in front of the water spout and licking the cool drops off his fingers. And I'm sure he would sit and twist that hose for hours if I let him. We are so happy here. 

Thank you, my beautiful family. x

NOTE: If you want to see a real veggie garden in action, check out this stunning film vignette of Fig and Fauna Farm in South Florida filmed by the super talented Tiger in a Jar. I consider this film to be meditation. It is just so peaceful and dreamy.