My Guilty Pleasure: Dirty Videos On The Internet
I spend way too many hours on the internet feeding my guilty pleasure. Over the years, I have found Google doesn’t satisfy my needs, I need videos. One quick video leads to another, then another. Some videos are dirtier than others but each sparks more excitement and I keep clicking. It’s addicting.
Before I realize it, an hour has passed.
And I’ve decided I am definitely going to plant a hedge of hydrangeas in my front yard this summer.
I’m currently obsessed with watching gardening videos on YouTube. I cannot stop watching them. They are my temporary guilty pleasure.
I live in the Midwest. Winters here can be brutal and seem eternal. Seriously…winter lasts for like half the year. Sure, the first snowfall in November is beautiful and magical. But, it loses its luster real quick.
It’s still winter here. So I cannot go outside and plant flowers yet. Well, technically I could, it would just be a massive waste of time and money because the plants would all die. The last frost in our region is usually mid-late April.
The excitement of seeing the first tulips peeking out of the ground after a Midwest winter is unmatched. Signs of life!
Once spring weather arrives, I can partake in my guilty pleasure — gardening.
I’m still a newbie to the gardening world. I’ve only been gardening for the past few years. Let me caveat when I say gardening — I’m talking about planting pretty perennials and annual flowers. Not food. I haven’t worked up enough confidence to plant fruits and vegetables yet.
My gardening hobby began after I became a homeowner a few years ago. The first year in my home, my dad was kind enough to help me landscape our front garden. He split a bunch of perennials and grasses from my parents’ garden and we planted them at my house. It was such an improvement to our curb appeal.
The second year, we tackled the backyard together. We took a trip to a local nursery and browsed the aisles for a couple of hours. It was so fun to look at the different plant varieties. I purchased a variety of plants from the nursery and paired those with some more perennials from my parents’ garden. My dad helped me plant everything and it was a beautiful transformation.
I didn’t realize how much time and dedication my garden would require. Which is good, because I’m a borderline lazy person. Had I known, I probably wouldn’t have started!
Gardening is hard work. It takes a lot of physical energy to dig for plants, lug the hose around, and pull weeds to maintain the garden throughout the season.
But it’s fun work!
I love being outdoors as much as possible in the spring and summer months. When I have to go water the plants or pull weeds, I put on my sunglasses and listen to my favorite music or podcast and hammer away.
It’s my therapy. A brief escape from my (beautiful) hectic life with two toddlers. It’s my time to zone out and not worry about anything. Except for weeds.
There are so many things we do in our everyday life that are difficult to track or measure for success. I love gardening because I see tangible results from my hard work. It’s easy to see progress and it’s so rewarding to watch the garden thrive as a direct result of my labor.
Each year, I expand the plant beds to another section of my yard. This year I will have a new 8–16 foot wide area to fill with new plants while maintaining the rest of the established garden. It will be a challenge to figure out exactly what to plant in this area since I have approximately a thousand different ideas thanks to the endless YouTube videos.
I am also going to experiment with planting food this year for the first time. I’ll use tips I gathered from some videos to tackle this project. I will start with a couple of herbs, some strawberries, and a few vegetables.
It will be a few more weeks before I can get outside to the garden. And I cannot wait!
If you have any vegetable gardening tips or YouTube channel recommendations, let me know in the comments! I need distractions to help pass time over the next few weeks.
