The gardening adventure continues! 2012

We added on to our backyard garden quite a bit this year!  We wanted more gardening room and also wanted to cut down on the amount of lawn to mow and trim so we pulled out the lawn in about a 12' radius all around the boxes, butting all the way up to the deck on the house side.  That side probably got at least 15' ripped out.  We then mulched in the whole area using the free city mulch.  It was quite the project that took several weekends to do-cutting and hauling sod takes a long time!  With the extra space we hope to build and add at least 2 more garden boxes, but that addition will be saved for next year.  This year with the empty space we added 3 big sunken in flower pots for decoration and also planted 3 vining plants that we hoped would spread all around the boxes and make good use of the space-one pumpkin, one watermelon and one squash.  None of the vine plants are really taking off though, so we'll see how they do!  

A view of the whole thing from the side of the house.  Notice our COMPLETELY brown, dead lawn.  We are having a horrible drought here and haven't had any rain since May. Some of our trees have already lost their leaves too and we've even been soaking the trees to try to save them.  Luckily while we were gone on vacation our friend was so kind as to water the garden for us.  I'm sure absolutely everything would be dead otherwise.  8 days with no water and 90+ temperatures would have done everything in for sure. 

A close up of one of the flower pots:)

This year also saw the addition of a rain barrel which is pretty laughable since it's only gotten filled and used ONCE with the drought we're having.  Not the year to spend the time and money on a rain barrel hoping to save money on the water bill;)  The little green plant in the mulch to the right of the barrel is the pumpkin plant. 

We wanted some type of border around the garden.  I'm hoping to eventually have a beautiful fence, cloaked in beautiful perennial butterfly garden flowers all the way around with an even more adorable arch covered gate entry.  This year we settled on a thick row of marigolds.  Baby steps:)  Never underestimate however, how long it takes to plant 2 full flats of marigolds!  That was several weeknights every night after work. 

The view from the deck, clockwise starting from the bottom left: box # 1 has 2 bell pepper plants and 2 tomato plants.  So far we have gotten 3 bell peppers and one tomato from this box.  box # 2 has 5 more tomato plants in it which are doing great!  Lots of blossoms and little green tomatoes on them so far.  box # 3 is half sugar snap peas and half green beans.  The peas are doing great, we lost about half of the bean plants to some type of bean plant eating critter though. box # 4 has 2 rows of carrots that are looking good so far and also had a row of radishes that we already picked.  The barrel in the middle has basil in it.  Just today I bought all of the necessary olive oil, parmesan cheese and walnuts to get my first batch of pesto in the freezer using some of the basil:)

Snooger Paps!!

One day when I asked Athena what kinds of fruits and veggies she wanted me to buy for the week for after school snacks, she asked for "snooger paps". It took a few minutes of her describing to me what it was, but I finally figured out that she wanted "sugar snaps". It was so darn cute though, that sugar snap peas are still and will forever be known as snooger paps in our house:) Well, guess what we found when we checked the garden today? A few snooger paps!!! She really was excited to show off (and then inhale) the snooger paps. Poor thing is squinting into the sun in this picture, thus the funny face:) Lots of other things are coming along also.

I spy with my little eye some cherry tomatoes! Cilantro seems to be coming along. I see lots of mama's favorite pico de gallo in our future:)
Here is the box with the carrots and the second and third planting of radishes.
We picked the first planting of radishes a few weeks ago.

Check out these gems:) They were dee-lish!The flower barrel in the middle is filling in nicely also. John said I planted it way to full. Pshaw! Silly boy!
A few green beans were ready too:) Just a handful. All of which got chowed down on the spot by the princess.
Woke up to see this little guy peaking out from the field of marsh grass behind our house. I'm really hoping he doesn't like snooger paps!!

So. Much. Excitement!

There is so much excitement around the zoo this week:) Alton took his first few steps all by himself! He did his best walking when we were visiting my parents the other night. He was standing holding on to one of the living room chairs and let go to walk about 4 feet all by himself over to the other living room chair! I of course didn't catch a picture of it, by I took this one of him and John practicing walking last night:) Big boy's other excitment is that he cut 2 more teeth this week. We're all pretty happy about this because it's been a long time coming! These 2 teeth have been trying to cut through forever and have been causing him quite a bit of havoc.

One of his favorite things to do lately is pull a pillow off of the couch, throw it on the floor and then lounge on it with a huge grin on his face.

Ena has had her fair share of excitement this week too. Friday was pajama day at school which she was incredibly excited for! Here she is modeling her pj choice for the big event:)

She also had some garden excitment when we walked down after school to check the garden and she about flipped her lid yelling "The radishes are growing! The radishes are growing! Mom! Mom! The radishes are growing" Sure enough, a neat little row of cute little radish sprouts have made their appearance:)

Yet more excitment was had by all when she did an awesome job peddling a 2 wheeler for the first time! (with training wheels of course:) Large motor abilities are not her thing so I was so proud of her for doing so awesome with this. Every night that it hasn't been raining, the first thing her and John do when he gets home from work is go out and take a few practice laps around the culdisac.
Our other family excitment was that Uncle Joe had his first calf of the spring born this week. We went to see the little cutie the other night and Uncle Joe surprised Ena by letting her name it:) It's a little boy calf and she named it Jake which I think is incredibly cute:)

I am feeling pretty excited that today was also the last day that Ena had to take her last and final dose from all the medications she has been on the last week and a half for her pnuemonia. Yippy!!!

Here's looking forward to a fun and exciting weekend to cap off our great week:)

Let the farming begin!

For several years Nicole and I have been talking about expanding our farming operation, so for Mother's Day this year Nicole got her first set of raised garden beds. We modeled them off of Ralph and Janet's beds that have provided us with many yummy treats in the past.

Stage 1 - Assembly


Ralph and I spent last Sunday constructing the boxes. The raw materials (and all good projects start with a 30 pack of beer... no we did not drink all of them).

Ralph, John and our team of helpers.

Here's Athena inspecting the placement of the garden boxes. We played around with several locations, but this is the one that got the most sun and is protected from the wind.

Athena and I ended up taking 3 trips to the local garden center/nursery in town. Our 1st trip was for a load of oak mulch that we used to make the bottom layer. Underneath the mulch we put some old news paper to help kill the grass. We then got 2 loads of gardening soil (1 yard total) and some peat moss to fill in the boxes.

Once the boxes were prepped we moved on to:

Stage 2 - Planting

While Nicole put the finishing touches on the trestle, Alton made sure the remaining boxes were plowed, tilled and ready to go.

In the first box Nicole and Athena planted beans and sugar snap peas. In the second box they planted carrots and radishes.

The final step was a good healthy dose of water and then we had 2 fully planted garden boxes. We are waiting a couple more weeks to plant some of the more temperature sensitive produce, but stay tuned for more updates.

The happy farming family!