My Garden

It's that time of year when everyone goes gardening crazy. This year I joined in on the fun. This is the first time I've ever had my own garden. I've planted and weeded gardens before but never from inception. I also haven't had a back yard in a very long time. 

I sat down one day and planned out what I wanted to do in the back yard. Then I borrowed a friend's garden claw and started tilling. This was quite the feat as I came across some rather large rocks. One such rock took me about 45 minutes to dig up. Of course, after I'd been digging for a good 40 minutes my husband says "You know we have a crowbar that would probably work better at getting that rock out".      O_o      Really?! After 40 minutes NOW he tells me! Well, sure enough the crowbar worked and the rock was out in moments. 

Here is my rock still in the ground, right after my husband suggested the crowbar. Once I had that puppy in my hand I knew it would be out in a matter of moments so I took a snapshot of my hard work.  

Here is the rock all cleaned off with the addition of one of the kids dinosaurs that was left in the yard. (I couldn't resist.) This rock weighs a tonne! It now sits proudly in the corner of my veg garden for all the world to see.

And here are the actual garden pictures with before and after shots:

My grass...isn't it pretty? It even feels nice in bare feet! (Now that's NICE grass!) This patch used to be all weeds. 

Here's my veg garden. I tilled it. This is where the giant rock was dug out. Ben mixed the soil and peat moss and then planted the veg. We planted tomatoes, red and green peppers, cucumber, zucchini and summer squash (but the picture looks like yellow zucchini so it's my mystery veg). If you look closely you'll see that I lined the edge of the gardens with rock. These rocks all came from my back yard and I think add character to my garden. Silly to some, but I absolutely adore it!

I wasn't going to put anything here, except new grass, but when I bought my veg the lilies were $2 and I couldn't resist. I'm a little worried about them because they're a little brown, but from what I understand lilies are pretty hearty so I'm hoping they'll perk up soon. If you look closely in the after picture I've got rocks bordering the lilies as well.

The next project for the back yard is to throw grass seed over the rest of the "lawn" which at the moment is only green because of the weeds. The other project for the yard is to put in patio stones which I'm  really excited about. This project will take longer than I'd originally hoped because it's more expensive than I'd first thought. I may just buy a couple of stones at a time until I have enough and then we'll do the installation. You can probably tell I'm super excited to have a real backyard and to be able to actually do something with it. The funny thing is we pretty much fight over who's going to do the watering! I can definitely say I've been getting a lot of sun this year and spending some REAL time outside! Most years I pretty much stay inside where it's cool. This year has been great so far - hot but not all that humid. It's been great and I hope it stays like this!