Green thumb or not?

You would think in the middle of short-term teams I would be writing a blog on our current team, which of course I certainly will.  Folks come down here and work/sweat/love on people and I am thrilled to work alongside them.  However, "life" goes on as well.

My garden

I still have to pay my bills, be a mother to my child, a wife to my husband, and a caretaker of my home.  In the midst of that I am trying to have a garden.  However, there are MANY obstacles I've had to overcome.  The first and foremost - where to put my garden.  Now...I do have a "perfect" spot in my back yard.  It's in the corner, out of the way - the dogs won't get to it - but the problem?  There is a cement foundation about 8 inches below the soil.  So - that doesn't leave very much room for plants to grow.  So my idea to have little rows of sweetly growing things quickly changed.  The other "problem" is you can't just run down to the local nursery and pick up your already 6" plants to put into said garden.  No...almost all plants here that can be purchased are decorative plants, not really garden type plants.  So...the next challenge comes from growing things from seed.  Have I said before it's 95 degrees/95% humidity almost year round?  And the only difference comes when it POURS and I mean POURS rain.  So, my plants shrivel up in the sun, or get drowned out by the rain.  What's a girl to do?  Well...I've been experimenting with plants to try and find those that will work.  So far I've been extremely successful with basil (holler!!), Rosemary, garlic, a pepper plant, mint, Aloe Vera (who knew), 2 tomato plants, and sunflowers.  Those have come with varying degrees of success.  I've tried planting my potted plants into the ground and about every-other plant dies.  It dies because of the stupid cement foundation beneath it, or the blazing sun, or being drowned out in the rain.

Basil

in the middle pot are two lechee plants grown from seed, and on the left is my pointsetta from Christmas

Mint

Two tomato plants

Broad leaf oregano - smells great, but not all that great for cooking

So each year, I'll continue to experiment and see what will work.  What would be really cool would be a raised garden - but that's a LOT of money in the purchase of wood and especially dirt.  Good planting dirt does not come cheap here.  But, I'm having fun (and a little frustration) in trying.