Let the gardening begin!

At long last, after a particularly hectic semester, it's time to break out the seeds, the gloves (which I rarely use, but really should), the trowel, a cold beer (well, okay maybe later today), and of course, this lovely gardening journal I received as a birthday gift last year from my good friend, Wilda. What fun!
Surprisingly, after throwing some sweet pea seeds randomly in a flower bed following some unsuccessful attempts to grow them in almost every other suitable area in the yard, these sprung up just as my winter/spring bulbs began to wither. Go figure!
Yes, I know they are not prolific. Yes, I know they could be bigger, brighter, taller, showier. But, by golly, they're here and they survived! Actually, they survived much better than I did after this rather brutal semester.

After spending my first official day off yesterday under the covers, reading, napping, eating, reading, napping, eating, interrupted only once by a very brief bike ride to a couple of stores no more than a mile away, followed by more reading, and napping, I figured it was time to get my bum in gear and be productive today. I am, however, still in my jammies (or jim jams, as Flanny and Ryan call them) and it's almost 11:00 a.m. Hummmm. I've certainly gardened in my jammies before. At least I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I'm off to a grand beginning, don't you think?

Forget the tarradiddles, enjoy the flowers!

In an effort to have a much more positive weekend than this work week has been, I went out first thing this morning to enjoy my garden! Here are some photos. I especially like the photo of the flowers and the meyer lemon tree, which has been a delight, indeed. (You can't really see the entire tree, just a lemon in the picture below.)

Note to self for next year's planting: Cover the raised flowerbed with something after planting the bulbs, to keep the squirrels from digging up the bulbs. Suspiciously, although I planted over 100 bulbs, the entire center of the flowerbed is almost empty, thanks to the squirrels who, I suppose, were thinking they were digging up their buried treasure, but, were, in fact, digging up my bulbs! Oh well, worse things could have happened. Hope those damn squirrels enjoy gnawing on tulip bulbs.

Oh, my. I wonder if it made them sick? Also suspiciously, I haven't seen nearly as many squirrels out and about near my yard. But, then again, I'm usually not home during daylight hours. I don't actually want to poison the little fuckers (okay, well maybe just a teeny, tiny bit since they stole the majority of my bulbs). The circle of life and all.

Enjoy the weekend!

Firing up the garden

At long last, I am pleased as punch to be growing my own veggies. Granted, I started very small, planting only lettuce, snow peas, and carrots. The wait to begin just about killed me. I decided not to plant directly into the soil in the backyard, as this home was once owned by the owner of the local Chevrolet dealership, and you never really know what's been dumped into the ground, especially when back in the day, nobody really thought about it much. Hey, we thought we were doing really great by refraining from pitching our trash out of the 1968 VW while we were merrily driving along! So, raised garden it is.

The wait was due to many factors. Mostly I had to wait for little Johnny to help me build the frame for the raised veggie garden, as well as make repeated trips to the recycling yard, where the city gives away mulch. Ten Home Depot buckets, filled to the brim (kind of steamy and stinky, actually, but very good mulch) over and over and over and over again. Even Ryan pitched in and made a trip to get mulch. So, here's the progress, so far:





Of course, we can't leave well enough alone. Nope. Little Johnny thought it would be really fun to have a fire pit in the backyard also. After building it, he decided it would be really festive to light the Christmas tree on fire. He's been saving it in the backyard just for this occasion. Here's what Christmas looks like in April:


He does have a point, though. We'll be able to go from picking fresh veggies from our garden to roasting those veggies in only three steps and a turn.