Life Lately...

Tiny figs on our fig tree:



Pablo still chewing everything he can fit in his mouth:



Saturday we volunteered on a Garden Tour. We got stationed at a really great house with wonderful owners. They even brought out a fan for us. Even though it was a hot day, we stayed cool and in the shade... And volunteering for 2.5 hours meant our tickets were free!

We saw some really lovely things...

















We're planning how to landscape the front of our house currently, and I think these lovely little purple things would be great along the walkway up to our house...














Life is good. Summer is here. Dreaming of perfect yards and gardens.... zzzzzzz.

Yay, it's really spring!

... You know what that means! Gardening!

Josh finally gave our lawn it's first (and much-needed) mowing of the year. I am so glad, too, because we were starting to be "those people". You know, the ones that don't mow their lawns? Those people.

Although he looked a little scary while he was doing it...


I went to Home Depot for some plants, and I was pleased I made it in time to get some lettuce (I missed it last year)... they didn't have many veggies available, so I got some hot peppers (since they did so well last year), brussels sprouts, and 3 kinds of lettuce (butter, red, and romaine). Our asparagus we planted last year is already growing like crazy!



See all that tall asparagus? Look how fat they are!




I really hope everything flourishes, and no critters eat my lettuce!

Last year I think we overcrowded the garden a little, so I wanted to keep it more sparse this time around. I opted to plant my herbs alongside the garage, along with a gardenia plant and a hydrangea. I really hope they do well!


(this is them before planting)
I have basil, thyme, lavender and rosemary. I also planted some mint, but it is in a pot so it doesn't take over everything, and some sage that I planted in a pot last year has come back with a vengeance... it's pretty huge for it only being the beginning of April!

Our poor garage was built the same time as our house (1928) and I am hoping we can replace some of the bad boards and give it a new coat of paint this year to match the house.

I'm really looking forward to our daily garden-waterings again! Such a nice relaxing thing to do after work... and I love checking the progress of everything...

Hoping we can get a few fruit trees in this year, too, and do something with the flowerbeds out front... just a few annuals and some azaleas would be enough to tide me over!

Garden - Week 12

Yep, I skipped two weeks of garden updates.

The squash and zucchini keep right on blooming, but we're just not getting any vegetables. Apparently, this is caused by lack of pollination. I guess the bees just aren't doing their thing. Rest assured that next year, as soon as the blooming starts, we'll be down there with paint brushes, doing the pollinating ourselves. We'll chalk it up to a lesson learned this time. All in all, our first year at this has been successful. But I wonder if we are going to hve the same problem with our pumpkins this fall. THAT would be a bummer.

My big tomato plant (potted all by it's lonesome in above picture) looks a little rough at times. Some of the branches have dried up and died, but other parts of the plant seem to be doing really well, and it keeps growing taller, too. No tomatoes yet, but several flowers. We'll see what happens.

(Heirloom tomato blooms)

We've had more jalapenos than I can count. And they just keep growing. It's been really fun, and we've been picking them less frequently to see how big they will get, so we've had some pretty good-sized ones in the last couple of weeks! It's slowing down a little bit, now, but we still have several more blooms and little ones still growing.

The basil is higher than my knee, creeping up to thigh-height! I need to find my food processor (in the garage) and make some pesto before it's too late.

I've let the dill go to flower, and once these dry, the seeds will fall out. I hope this means the dill will come up on it's own again next year!

I didn't think my lavender was even going to do anything this year, but it did, and it's lovely!

And here is a picture of my tarragon, just because I think it's pretty.

Garden update - Week Seven

Things are HAPPENING out there, folks!

Here is how we're looking at week seven.

We have jalapenos growing like crazy!

And here is the MOST exciting thing, discovered yesterday - our first zucchini!

Isn't it the cutest?


We've used lots of dill, basil and broccoli so far... the garden has been really useful to us and will be even more so in the comng weeks.

Garden Update

Here we are at Week Six!

Look at that crazy zucchini!

I love these cute yellow flowers on our tarragon!

Cute lil' mushroom.

Our rock rocks!

Beautiful orange poppy! Can't wait to have our cutting garden next year and grow a ton more of these.

Garden Update!

This was our garden the first day we planted it:

This is our garden as of yesterday (5 weeks, 1 day after planting).

Not bad, huh?

We only have one surviving yellow squash plant. But, it looks promising... look at all those blooms! We may have a few squash this year after all.

One of our MANY Zucchini plants:

A zucchini bloom getting close to blossoming:

With all the rain we've been getting, our jalapeno plants have grown about 3 inches. This little bud is going to be a pepper someday!

The rain has also given us a few of these in the yard:

Unfortunately, our sunflowers are not doing well AT ALL. Something keeps eating the leaves. We're just going to have tall leaf-less stems with big flowers on them... if they even get that far. I read garlic powder helps, gonna try that tonight.

Today is the day!

We're heading to Atlanta once I get off of work today and then to IKEA tomorrow morning - new living room furniture is just hours away! I can't believe it's finally happening. :) Couch, chairs, table, shelving, perhaps lighting and a rug... I'm hoping to tackle some painting in the coming weeks, so that the house finally stops feeling so blah. I think The Bip's honey-do list is going to be pretty full once he's done with finals next week!

Josh finally got his TV sold on Craigslist last night. We're holding off on buying a new one for the living room for now, until we see where summer leads him as far as jobs go. I think everything will be fine, but it's best to err on the side of caution, especially with the wedding coming up. So, we're just going to use our bedroom TV in the living room for now, and put the 3rd bedroom tv in our room. We're also holding off on the painting of the trim until we see how the job thing goes. Trim painting is not going to be a cheap job, nor is it one I feel comfortable going the DIY route on. We have a LOT of trim - 4 inch moulding around the windows and doors and 6 inch baseboards! I can live with the stained wood trim a while longer, as long as I can get some color on the walls, while Josh feels the opposite. Oh, love... such a compromise sometimes! ;)

Speaking of that sweet love o' mine, one of the many things I love about him is that he wears my "Cooter's" hoodie all the time. It's too short for him in the torso and sleeves, but he doesn't care. He puts it on when he studies, when he goes out to water the garden, any time there is a bit of a chill in the air. It never fails to make me smile.

So dang endearing.

In wedding news - everything has been reserved! We got the reception venue we wanted, and found an adorable cottage to honeymoon in through Mermaid Cottages. http://www.mermaidcottages.com/ We'll be staying at "The Shrimp". All is set to go for September 4th. :) We're keeping it pretty simple, but I am looking for forward to all of it, especially the food! We're looking into doing personalized Jones Soda bottles, too. I was thinking root beer? Yum! How good would that be mixed with some vanilla vodka? Like a sinful root beer float... Okay, so now I'm hungry and thirsty... moving on...

I can't seem to go one entry without talking about our garden, can I? So why stop now? Right now we're celebrating OUR FIRST BROCCOLI! It was so exciting to see it last night. We check on everything every day when I get home from work, and it's just crazy what all can happen in a garden in a day!

Broccoli:

Here's how everything looks 2.5 weeks in:

Our Zucchini and Broccoli are the overacheivers so far, but the thyme, dill, peppers, rosemary, tarragon, basil and pumpkins are trucking right along at an amazing pace, too. I think we're down to one yellow squash plant (boo!), but at least it's not dead yet. And the lavender has done nothing. It's still nice and green and lovely, but it has not grown one bit. We're still hopeful about everything, though. And we have two more asparagus!

Our first three asparagus came up on the 23rd of this month.4 days later, this is how tall they were:

One last bit of yard talk - I think it's a maple tree in our backyard, near the garage, but it has just sprouted the strangest flowers... I've never seen such tropical looking flowers on such a plain ol' suburban tree before!

Pretty, though!