Creating a Flower Garden

Creating A Flower Garden

Sounds like a simple task, right?

Not in a foreign country!  The language barrier creates quite a few problems with everyday tasks.

Have you every tried to give specific flower names in a foreign language.  These names are not in our everyday vocabulary, so my interpreter just kept looking at me confused saying, "I am sorry.  I do not know what you say."   I had 3G on my phone (we do not have 4G in this country yet), and went through each flower I wanted to purchase seeds for and showed the merchant pictures.  With lots of patience among all involved, the seeds were purchased.

A Mini Zinnia from the new garden.

After I dug the garden, planted the seeds, and began to see the fruit of my labor, weed killer was put on the grass near the flower garden (by a native gardener who helps with the yard sometimes).  I explained to the native gardener (through an interpreter) that I planted seeds in the garden, and these little seedlings were not weeds to kill.  Somewhere along the way, he did not understand and the weed killer killed a third of the garden.  

All said and done, the garden is beginning to grow. It only took a little more effort (just like in most daily tasks we take for granted when we all speak the same language) in a foreign country.