Rock Path in Bloom

Thank heaven's all of the spring rain has finally let up a bit.  It did wonders for my flowers (and weeds too unfortunately), and it's hard to imagine needing sprinklers again.
My front yard flowers are in full bloom, or nearing, so I thought I'd share some of the recent beauty.  It even looks better now that my Mom has been staying with us for about a week and weeded!

So from this previous post FALL PROJECTS from a while back I showed the new pathway that I put in leading up to my front door.  Here's a photo of what it looked like just after it was finished.

And here it is now.  Not from the same angle though because the irises are so big it wouldn't show any of the rest of it.

Most of this I just transplanted from other areas, some I brought with me from my former yard, and some I got from family and neighbors.  I have many varieties of sedums, some lamium and some creeping thyme that has filled in nicely between  the stepping stones.  Last year I filled in empty spaces with annuals while I waited for them to fill in, but this year they are looking gorgeous and make a patchwork quilt of color on the ground.

I had daffodils that came up in the spring, and hope to add more bulbs this fall.

Another friendly insect to pose for me on one of the sedums, which I love because you just break off a chunk and throw it in the ground and it grows!  That's how I got the area so filled in cheaply.  Hardly needs water also.

We also have a very interesting cross-pollination side-effect that has happened in the front yard.  Our house had white iris:

My Mom and Dad brought me some purple iris:

So the formerly white ones in between the two now produce these irises - which I LOVE!

And even though the petals are about to fall off of this Peony I have to share it.  They are the same color as the ones my Grandmother had planted in the house I grew up in, so the scent always brings back childhood memories.

And since my Mom brought Chloe out front and watch while she weeded, we also get to enjoy this photo of a very happy Beagle!

Time to get my green thumb ready

The snow is gone, my daffodils are emerging, things need pruned, the Burpee catalog has been requested - spring is here!  I have so many projects I need to be working on, but I really wanted to get this post up.  These photos make me so happy, and that's what spring is all about.

Last year we spent a ridiculous amount of money creating a new garden space.  Not just any ol' tilled up piece of ground though, we built my actual dream garden!  Yeah, I know, who has that?  ME!  I wanted a pretty space to garden in.  Neat, organized, weed-free and fenced to keep our animals out (it partially worked).  My husband and I picked a spot, sprayed the grass, and then proceeded to spend enough money on it to daily say, "This garden better produce lots of food, 'cause we're gonna need to live off it." as we filled it with wood, dirt and rocks.

My parents started doing raised bed gardens like 25 years ago with great success.  So with the resurgence of the Square-Foot Gardening craze due to the economy, we jumped on the band wagon.  We had been planning to do raised beds, and it was finally the year to get that project done.

PART 1:
We ended up with a plan that has 256 sq ft of garden space!  Yes, that's enough to feed a small village.  But we do have 3 boys, remember?  It took us about a month to get it all done, so we ended up planting just after Memorial Day.  Sooooo......da da da DA!  Here it is a few weeks after planting!

The fencing is pricey, and the same we use for our animals, but it's sturdy and we use it as a support also.  The front edge, where the gate is, we plan on putting an arbor over the gate and planting grape vines along the fence this year.  The small box on the right center is my herb garden, and the one on the left is my strawberry patch.

My neighbors probably thought I was a little crazy because I spent so much time photographing my garden, but here are the photos of my lovely little vegetables.

Beets (yeah, I know - duh!)

 

 Bush beans.

Cucumber vines.

Squash blossom.

Cabbage (ended up going in the compost bin later after a bug infestation).

Strawberry flower blossoms.  We got SO many strawberries off our first year plants!  I had plenty of help picking them, none ever actually made it into the house.

Romaine lettuce.

My one and ONLY spaghetti squash that my dog didn't reach through the fence and eat.  Apparently she has a thing for squash and pumpkins.  They will be moved further in this year.

Lovely green tomatoes.

Cherry and Pear tomatoes.  SO yummy and sweet.  Makes my mouth water just looking at the photo.  I totally snacked on these every day when I watered.

My butternut squash took over half of the garden like a giant squid!  But we got some great squash from it that turned into the most awesome soup.  I'm preparing to post the recipe soon.

I'm so proud of this photo.  Tears.  I not only grew these two blond cuties, but the watermelon they are holding also!  Yes.  I grew a watermelon.  The plan was for the kids to partner up and help raise certain parts of the garden.  They planted, I ended up doing the rest of everything with some help watering, and picking.  But they all got to decide some of what was planted in their boxes.  They wanted watermelon, so we tried it and I was totally amazed that it worked.  I had never planted watermelon before and this Sugar Baby was so good and sweet.

PART 2:

So, after all that planting, I needed a way to remember what I had planted, where, what varieties, and how it worked out.  I found some garden planner ideas, and this is what I came up with for my garden.

 

Front: Really simple design for now in a 1 inch binder.

On the back I have the whole garden plan labeled.

Each box corresponds with it's letter on the plan.

On the right side of the page is a place for the info.  I HIGHLY reccomend Scarlet Nantes carrots!

Close-up of my lovely little herb garden plan.

I just used Microsoft Publisher to do all this, so it was really easy.  I printed everything on cardstock to make it sturdy, and the blank pages in between, will be for photos.  Now that I'm done with 2009 they'll go into page protectors to keep them clean and I'll print out new pages for this year.  If you click on the photos you can read them larger to see more of the details of my garden.

The best part of our garden was that nothing went to waste.  Anything we didn't eat or didn't work out, went to the chickens to eat, or into the compost bin.  As you can see, it really made me happy, and I can't wait to get started again.  It was a huge initial investment and a lot of work, but this year, other than cleaning up old plants and re-stringing, it's ready to go.  Hopefully I'll be planting, and eating, spinach soon.  Of course I'll take photos.

Fall Projects

I'm finally getting around to posting the photos of my fall projects. I have more projects in the works, but here's what I have done so far:
When we first moved in this area leading up to the front door was overgrown with huge rosebushes that you could barely walk past without getting scratched. We took those out and I cut the grass out and added a few flowers, but this spring I sprayed the grass the rest of the way to the sidewalk to add this path. David and the kids helped me dig and till for many evenings. We tried to get the rocks laid before we left for Hawaii, but ran out of time, then fair, school, etc., so I finally got back to this project and spent days pulling the weeds that had filled it in and getting the rocks in. I'm really happy with it. I pulled some perennials out of my summer pots and put those in the ground and a neighbor gave me some starts of peonies, and coreopsis. Next spring I'm starting phase 2 of the front yard landscaping which will be to make a courtyard near the front door and I will move more flowers to this bed from that area.

Then I took a fun break for UEA weekend and went to the Ogden dinosaur park with the kids. We love going around Halloween to see the fun decorations and it's such a pretty fall setting. In the museum a man spent around 30 minutes teaching us about rocks and gemstones. Logan, Stauney and I were fascinated by all he taught us. Noah and Evan were a little impatient. Evan was looking out the window at the dinosaurs and said, "If we don't get out of here soon, I'm going to break this window and jump out to get to those dinosaurs."

Posing by the pumpkins. After the dino park, we went to Smith and Edward's in Willard to look for Halloween costume items. The kids had so much fun trying on the old military surplus stuff. They thought it was the greatest store ever. For those of you not familiar with the store, their motto is "We have it if you can find it."

I'm so glad my Mom was up and helped Evan and I pick the grapes from our neighbor's grape vines. There were a lot. It was a cold morning and we were freezing, but Evan was so excited about helping to pick them.
I got about 30 quarts of grape juice from them. This was the first time I have done white grape juice and the colors are so weird. These bottles are from the same batch. They started out light and got darker toward the end. The grapes were really sweet though and the juice is great.

The kids and I also picked 2 bushel of pears from our tree, but I can't seem to find those photos so I think they are on a different memory card. They will have to wait until I get well enough to make them into jam.

Mario Party 6

I stayed up until midnight finishing grape juice because the next day was our Ward Halloween party and I had to get costumes made. Noah came up with this idea when he said he wanted to be Mario for Halloween. It just ballooned from there and we ended up with the whole family as Mario characters: Mario, Luigi, Waluigi, Wario, Princess Peach and Princess Daisy. We won best costumes at the party, and while I was sewing Logan made David's Aunt Donna's chili recipe to take and won 2nd place in the chili cook-off. I'll post the recipe later, it's really good and easy!

The rusty railing before.

I've been wanting to re-paint this railing since we moved in and a recent spell of warm weather convinced me it was time to get it done. Since I hadn't used the textured paint before I under-estimated how much I needed and ended up running to the store 3 times to get more.

The finished railing!

I used Rust-oleum multi-colored textured paint and I'm really happy with how it turned out. But I could have used 2 instead of the 6 cans I ended up using if I would have painted it brown first with the textured paint over that.

The dresser before.

My SIL Karen has started refinishing furniture and had bought this dresser but decided not to use it. She sold it to me and told me what I needed to buy to refinish it. It was a pale green color and was in good shape other than the old paint finish. It was a little scary at first to start sanding it, but after I got the hang of the sander I really enjoyed doing it. The paint went on well, and with Karen's great tips it all went good.

And here's the finished dresser.

It was my husband's idea to do it pink. Stauney loves it! It is a really sturdy dresser and will be great for her room. It was missing 3 handles, so we found these cute small ones to put on the top drawers and I painted all the handles with a brown hammered steel paint.We are going to do her room in pink and brown soon. I sold her full-sized bed to my parents for their guest room and we are going to get a twin bed for her room so she'll have more space.

We are thinking of starting a little business re-finishing furniture, so tell me what you think of it. She did a similar dresser and mirror in a lime green paint with brown stain that is just beautiful. Thank you Karen for sharing your knowledge and experience with me.