Hey world!!!
I have been so crazy busy! Isn't it funny, you cut back your schedule and think, "Oh yeah, I'll have so much time on my hands now, what am I going to do with myself? Just ages, to do WHATEVER I WANT, BWAHAHAHA." Yep, doesn't quite work out that way. ;)
Lots and lots of gardening going on at this house. I'm literally overjoyed with all the progress we've made on making our home beautiful and ours. So, because we're renting, Joel's been a tad bit reluctant to redo anything major. The backyard was landscaped and redone by the previous tenant, and the way she felt was that her baby was the back and feck the front. Literally, she said that to me-- okay, minus the feck part, but hey, it was implied! Hahaha. So needless to say, our front was sadly neglected and untouched for over eight years! Gasp! All that crabgrass was happily plugging away, the Japanese Irises were crowding each other into the next milenia and the snails were basically creating mini Eden cities of snail prosperity. Oh, and the aloe wasn't too shabby in it's own goal of world domination. I've had the idea of pulling all that junk out and putting something beautiful in for a few months now, but didn't actually act on my desire until our first really beautiful sping-esque weekend. I put on some gardening gloves, pulled out our really crappy shovel (which bends mind you---it's plastic; and it has been my black widow killer, so it's sat out in the sun for a few months. Basically, anytime I put a lot of pressure on it, I was worried it would shatter and send plastic shrapnel into my face. There's definitely something to be said for having good tools!) and went to town! Here's what it looked like before I started:
Then once I pulled all that crap out:
So much better already, right?! I had work the rest of the week, so I couldn't start planting until the next weekend and honestly, Joel and I loved how it looked all blank. I mean, I wish the house painters had gone all the way down, but who CARES! No more crabgrass!!!! WOO HOO! :D
We went to good old reliable Green Acres here in Sac. and picked out everything I wanted and had planned for...plus a few things I didn't and back home to plant we went. And Viola!
This is the view front our front porch! There are Nasturtiums in the foreground where all the aloe once reined. Notice I left just one for sentimental reasons, it just felt wrong to pull them all out!
We pulled the flag stones from the back yard, and the stones that form the border are the same that were there before, I just moved the boundary out about six inches or so further than it was, and double layered them.
If anyone's curious, here's what we planted:
Three different types of tomatoes, beets, rainbow chard, spinach, bok choi, bell peppers, artichoke, stevia, calendula, Chinese torpedo onions, lemon basil and sweet basil, Delphinium, lavender, Icelandic poppies and poppy anemones, nasturtium, dahlias, and strawberries. Whew! I'm so excited!
I just feel so amazingly satisfied. I've wanted to grow tomatoes for years, but first off, our back yard doesn't get enough sun, and second, even if I could, there's no where to plant them. Here's a picture of our backyard just for good measure:
Course, that's from last spring, I did some hard core trimming this year, but it will be beautiful once it all fills back out. Our backyard is so tiny, but I feel like it's so special, we hardly notice. My favorite has to be the Redbud tree. Gorgeous! Since this picture was taken, I've added a raspberry plant to the very far back where the potted tree is that I plan to train up the fence; and the tree that's in the pot is now in the ground to the left, in the corner. The tree is a Japanese Snowbell and it struggled horribly last year, it was just so unhappy in that pot. I can already tell it is infinitely happier in the ground.
Oh! I also planted a wild grape plant under our side fence! I'm excited about this one, it's really tiny at the moment, only about four inches tall, but it has already sprouted two new leaves in the past week.
And finally, I planted one of my very favorite plants, white bleeding hearts!!! I've grown them in the past, but they never get enough shade, hopefully this new spot will work, it's almost all shade, and I have the hardest time getting things to grow there. So far so good though.
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Cheers!
I have been so crazy busy! Isn't it funny, you cut back your schedule and think, "Oh yeah, I'll have so much time on my hands now, what am I going to do with myself? Just ages, to do WHATEVER I WANT, BWAHAHAHA." Yep, doesn't quite work out that way. ;)
Lots and lots of gardening going on at this house. I'm literally overjoyed with all the progress we've made on making our home beautiful and ours. So, because we're renting, Joel's been a tad bit reluctant to redo anything major. The backyard was landscaped and redone by the previous tenant, and the way she felt was that her baby was the back and feck the front. Literally, she said that to me-- okay, minus the feck part, but hey, it was implied! Hahaha. So needless to say, our front was sadly neglected and untouched for over eight years! Gasp! All that crabgrass was happily plugging away, the Japanese Irises were crowding each other into the next milenia and the snails were basically creating mini Eden cities of snail prosperity. Oh, and the aloe wasn't too shabby in it's own goal of world domination. I've had the idea of pulling all that junk out and putting something beautiful in for a few months now, but didn't actually act on my desire until our first really beautiful sping-esque weekend. I put on some gardening gloves, pulled out our really crappy shovel (which bends mind you---it's plastic; and it has been my black widow killer, so it's sat out in the sun for a few months. Basically, anytime I put a lot of pressure on it, I was worried it would shatter and send plastic shrapnel into my face. There's definitely something to be said for having good tools!) and went to town! Here's what it looked like before I started:
We went to good old reliable Green Acres here in Sac. and picked out everything I wanted and had planned for...plus a few things I didn't and back home to plant we went. And Viola!
If anyone's curious, here's what we planted:
Three different types of tomatoes, beets, rainbow chard, spinach, bok choi, bell peppers, artichoke, stevia, calendula, Chinese torpedo onions, lemon basil and sweet basil, Delphinium, lavender, Icelandic poppies and poppy anemones, nasturtium, dahlias, and strawberries. Whew! I'm so excited!
I just feel so amazingly satisfied. I've wanted to grow tomatoes for years, but first off, our back yard doesn't get enough sun, and second, even if I could, there's no where to plant them. Here's a picture of our backyard just for good measure:
Oh! I also planted a wild grape plant under our side fence! I'm excited about this one, it's really tiny at the moment, only about four inches tall, but it has already sprouted two new leaves in the past week.
