We are some of the weird people who managed to buy a home during covid19. To be fair, when we started our home buying journey we had no idea just how bad the Corona Virus was going to get. It did complicate buying a home a bit, but in the long run we had hired a great agent and had a great broker and they got us through it. What happens though soon as one buys a new home? They find themselves at a hardware store more than ever before in their lives. New homes = Hardware stores. In most parts of America this means the big ones are Home Depot or Lowes!
New homes = Hardware stores
I remember my Dad particularly liking Home Depot and I thought it was about time we got a credit card with them. This felt like an important adulting moment, and way past time. Having moved as a military family over a dozen times, and renting all those years as we bounced around the country, we hadn’t really needed on. Now though having gotten a home we adored and have to take care of all ourselves, it was time. While our home is amazing, there were things to fix, tools to get, hardware/locks to change to name just a few things. Also, given the pandemic and the difficulty in acquiring certain foods, we were motivated to build a chicken coop and get gardens going. Having any kind of self sustaining food system would help our worried parental hearts.
Covid closed the Nurseries!
I tried to order all the things we needed online. Home Depot though was taking over a month to ship some things, as was Amazon, and local nurseries were closed due to covid. Hardware stores were open though! Given my health I didn’t go anywhere at all the first few months, but eventually, husband agreed to let me go to the outdoor sections of the big hardware stores for garden supplies. We mostly went to Home Depot. I struggled to find a lot of what I wanted but at least I was outside and could see other human beings at a distance. Home Depot was doing a fairly good job of trying to keep people safe. Still, so many of their plants looked unwell and they didn’t have a lot of the plants we wanted.
Rediscovering Lowes!
One afternoon on a rare trip out to hopefully get plants and soil something unexpected happened. Home Depot wasn’t letting anyone in their plant section from outside. They were making everyone go into an S line (because I have no better word for it) to enter the store and the line was long. People in line outside were too close together and too few had masks on, so my plans to go in wasn’t going to happen. So off to Lowes we went without thinking much about it.
I was able to go in the garden section and they had the soil I needed right out front for the raised beds, they had peat moss and compost and it was just so easy. Husband made a few trips with all the bags of soil to be purchased and put in our van and I got to explore the plants. Goodness I miss my Dad, he would have reminded me of all the things I should be planting. I found an adorable little rosemary plant and got it just because my Dad had a favorite bush that while it no longer tasted great, it smelled amazing. Anyway, I found so many plants and stuffed our van full. I even went a few steps into the store and grabbed a house plant and a few succulents. Husband looked at me funny but didn’t fuss. It was like I was a kid in a candy store. Husband laughed and reminded me, I always like Lowes plants better.
I always like Lowes plants better.
The thing is, he is right! Some how I had forgotten this! To be fair, it had been 5 years since I put in a garden. (I loved square foot gardening!) Most of my house plants the last few years I had purchased online or they were gifts. Turns out the plant gifts husband tended to get me often came from Lowes. So that is why this blog post is now here, so I don’t forget again that I love Lowes plants! Fall will come and I will try to figure out what to plant here (I think I can put blueberry plants in then?), I hope I don’t forget. Next spring will come and we will hopefully be quicker about getting plants into the ground and I hope I don’t forget, I love Lowes plants!
On another note, I learned a nursery about 40 minutes away is going online ordering the first part of the week for pick up the second part of the week. They are all native plants! We need more of those in the yard and our homeschool kids are doing a project that requires some. Slowly things here are reopening and everyone is finding a new normal.
We have big garden we are creating at the back of the property soon, a bit late seeing it is June, I know. Still, hopefully Lowes still has fantastic plants! I can’t wait till spring next year when we can do so much more!
