The Garden Is Growing!

It's a beautiful Sunday morning, and we finally have a day to spend at home around the house after a couple of busy weekends in a row. 

Today I'm sharing a few pics of some of our growing plants outside. We haven't gotten too much rain so far this summer, but we've had enough I guess, for some pretty good growth with our flowers and garden vegetables. 

Just look at some of my flower pots in the backyard: 

I've got lots of pretty pink petunias taking off in my pots right now!

The garden has also been growing, much better than last year's. These pictures were actually from a week ago, and since then, I think they've even grown more.

This first row is all tomatoes, and they've pretty much outgrown their cages at this point!

We also have a row of corn growing, as well as some butternut squash and cucumbers. I think it will probably be another month or so at least before we actually get to harvest some vegetables, though.

Last weekend was pretty hot (which is kind of my jam), so I was able to hang out in the yard a little and watch the garden grow. :)

This weekend feels more spring-like, only lower 70s for a high, so we're spending time around the house with the windows open and a nice breeze flowing through the house.

Cheers to a nice Sunday all!

Back Patio Life

It feels like summer finally! It was hot this weekend, but so nice! We hung out at home, cleaned up the patio, and Trent worked on his outdoor bar.

The flowers in my pots are still looking good, though we haven't really had much rain lately. That reminds me..I should probably water the flowers again soon. :)

Trent's outdoor bar is finally starting to look like a bar. He's using the door frame he built for our wedding, and adding wood pieces to it that he and his dad had laying around. 

Here's the bar top in progress -

He got the bar table put together, but it will need sanded and sealed. The wood in the table is all from old pallets we got from our neighbors. 

I think it looks pretty good so far. And he's super excited about it. It's kind of a break from all of the boring house stuff that we have to do, but at least he's having fun doing it. Today we went to Lowe's and he got some corrugated steel roofing that he will be adding to the front of the bar, and he's also making a roof out of it. 

We made a fire last night and hung out on the back patio. It was such a nice summer night. We also dreamed about a full-length fence enclosing the yard...that would be nice, and would create a little more privacy. Someday!

The back patio is officially ready for summer. The tables and chairs are all cleaned off and the lights are strung on the umbrella.

I think we have a pretty nice and relaxed ambience going on back here. Can't wait to hang out here for the rest of the summer.

 

Our Pretty Peonies

I love our peonies that come up every year in May! I have to share them each spring! It's been pretty rainy lately, but although the weather can't decide what to do right now, one thing's for sure: the peonies are really doing well!

We have 2 peony bushes now - one in front near the road that's been there for years, and another on the side of the house by the driveway, which we planted maybe 5 years ago or so.

These photos are of the newer peony bush by the driveway. It has really taken off this year! 

This is a photo of the same bush just a couple of years ago when it was first starting to come up in the spring:

It was so little! When I first got this peony bush, I think it was really only one lone peony bloom. At first it would get mowed over, and never really bloomed much. Now we have more pretty blooms like this one in the yard:

It's really similar in color to the one out front. When they first bloom they look like a pretty blush pink. As they open up though, they get white and start to lose most of the pink color.

I think they're prettiest right now, when they're starting to open up. 

It rained today, so they're even sporting tiny raindrops on those petals. They are so nice to come home to everyday! 

Planting This Year's Garden

Hey guys, what a week! Through the crazy busy-ness that was this past week, we managed to make time to get the garden planted! Trent had to take his truck in to get repaired, so I had to pick him up from work at the end of the week. Then we saw Luke Bryan Friday night, and went to a birthday party yesterday! Today we're finally home again getting things done around the house.

We had gotten the veggies to plant last weekend, but didn't have time to plant them all until Tuesday night. We got it all done just before dark though, and so far it's looking much better than last year's garden at this stage.

We even got some rain this week which helped to get those plants going once they were in the ground. And we're trying a new rabbit-proofing system this year, but I'll get to that a little later. :)

So, on to what we planted. Last year, we went all certified organic and started mostly from seeds. This year, we have a mix of organic and conventional, and are starting mostly from plants.

We have a few different types of tomatoes: organic Red Beefsteak and Husky Cherry Red tomatoes..

Cherokee Purple and Romas..

As well as organic Better Bush tomatoes. We'll see how all of those tomatoes do this year. I think they'll do a little better, since these plants are a bit more mature than those we planted last year.

We have another watermelon plant this year...

Butternut squash, Cucumber...

Red Bell Peppers, and Sweet Potatoes! We're kind of excited about these sweet potato plants. This might be the first time we've done them, though I can't remember for sure.

And finally, we did get a couple of seed packets. Sweet corn and these interesting Kaleidoscope carrots that Trent picked out...I'm not sure about these, but we will see how they are I guess!

Trent did the majority of the digging and planting, while I got the plants out of their containers and prepared them to be put into the ground. Many of the containers we got were actually the decomposable kind that you have to soak first, remove the wrappers, and cut the bottoms off before planting. Then you leave the decomposable paper containers around the plants when you put them into the ground. This is supposedly to help the plant with transplant shock.

We had old tomato cages from previous years that we put around the plants.

The garden space we have out back is pretty large, so we were able to space out the plants pretty far apart this year, which is especially nice for the cucumbers that tend to spread out quite a bit.

The tomatoes are on the far left end, followed by the cucumber plant, peppers, and butternut squash. Then there's the row of sweet potatoes, and a couple of rows of corn and carrots, then a mound for the watermelon.

We also finally got to plant my wildflower seeds at the end of the garden. I'm excited to see if these will grow into beautiful flowers this summer!

Now, here is the rabbit-proofing method we decided on for this year's garden: We got a roll of chicken coop wire, about $10 at Lowe's. Then cut sections of it and wrapped them around each of the plants we put into the ground. 

We are hoping this will prevent little critters from getting in there and eating our veggie plants, which happened quite a bit last year!

We'll probably take these barriers off once the plants get larger and established, to make room for them to grow. I think we had about 15 total plants to wrap the wire caging around.

It was getting dark by the time we finished all of our cages, but they're all done!

We ran the hose out back after finishing up, and started the sprinkler on them for a little while, just to make sure the soil got nice and wet.

Then Saleen wanted to check out the garden, too. I think she approved, though her face said she wasn't quite sure...

I'm glad the planting stage is all over! Now our next step is just to put down a little weed preventer, pull the inevitable weeds this summer, and wait for our tiny plants to grow into some yummy veggies! Should be a better crop than last year's!

Flowers In Planters

Summer has started early this year! Man, it was a hot one this past weekend. We picked up a bunch of flowers at Lowe's on Saturday, and since we were home all day Sunday, I decided I would plant them all in my pots. 

As soon as I started planting - in the sun, in black cut-off leggings and a t-shirt - I realized it was much hotter than I expected! I went in and changed to shorts and a tank top, which was much more appropriate for the heat. We even had to pick up our new living room air conditioner this weekend (the old one bit the dust last year), because it was about 85 degrees yesterday, and is supposed to be even hotter today. That hot weather came up pretty quickly!

But despite the heat, I got all of my flowers transplanted into pots. This year, I planted a total of 14 pots to put outside around the house. All of the pots I used were leftover from previous years, and I even have more I didn't use!

I also didn't have to buy any new soil, fertilizer, or flower food. I was able to use all of the soil leftover inside the pots, which was nice. So all I had to do was plant the flowers!

This year I planted Petunias and Dusty Miller. Those two always do really well for me, so I'm sticking to them! I did also end up getting a few Celosia (not pictured) for one of the planters, but the flowers look very "stemmy"- I'm hoping they spread out a little more. Usually the celosia I get is shorter, so I'm waiting to see what they do.

I stuck with the same flowers as last year for these big planters by the garage. These planters were leftover from the wedding, and we just kept them to plant flowers in every year by the house.

I realize now looking at the below picture of the planter from an "above angle", that I could have spaced out those petunias a little more in the front. Oh well! These guys usually spread out pretty well. :)

I'll have to share more pictures of the pots on the front porch and around the house, especially once they start growing and taking over their assigned pots. They are usually over-flowing by July!

We are hoping to get the vegetable garden all planted this week. We didn't have time over the weekend, but have gotten all of our veggie plants for it. Will share those pictures once we get our veggies in the ground - and a rabbit control system in place! Last year was a doozy. ;)

Rainy Days and Mondays

So it's not Monday - It's Saturday, but it's a rainy one today! April showers bring May flowers though, right? I'm just popping in while we're at home watching the Cubs game. We were supposed to get our new dishwasher delivered today (I ordered it online from Lowe's a couple of weeks ago, and it just came in), but they weren't able to deliver it until Wednesday. That didn't work for us, because we are both gone during the week working. SO..the plan was to go to town today to pick it up instead.

So right now we're still at home, waiting for the rain to slow down so we can finally pick up our dishwasher. (It's been pouring for hours now) I'm ready to get a new one, since our current one has been leaking every time we run it. It gets the kitchen floor soaking wet, so we have to put a bazillion towels down in order to run it! It's a rollaway dishwasher, too, as is the new one, since we don't yet have a hook-up in our kitchen for one.

Meanwhile, I've also been waiting for a nice day to plant these wildflowers that I got in the mail recently:

Did anyone else sign up on the Cheerios website to get wildflower seeds? It's part of their Bring Back the Bees promotion. I thought it would be fun to do!

Trent's dad just tilled up the garden last weekend for us, but since then it's been pretty rainy and chilly, so we haven't been able to plant them back there yet. I'm still itching to get some flowers for my pots, too. 

Next week, we leave for Ohio on Thursday! Trent will be a groomsman in his cousin Aaron's wedding. We are super excited to see everyone again and hang out for a few days. 

Ok, continuing to wait for the rain to slow... will keep you updated!

Yard Work Has Begun

Hey all! So yesterday turned out to be such a nice day that we were able to finally get a little work done in the yard. It was so nice out, sunny and in the lower 70's.

I got my mulching done in the flower beds. We had 6 bags, which was just enough to get the beds looking all fresh and cleaned up. I also raked out a bunch of leaves from the side yard. I got the job done all by myself, and I was worn out by the end of it!

So afterward, I sat out back on the patio and watched Trent start on his mini project - he's making an outdoor bar out of supplies and reclaimed wood that we already have on hand.

First he built a floor out of some plywood and some boards we had laying around.

Then he took the door frame he built for our wedding, set it on top, and attached it to the floor.

It's going to be kind of the framing for his bar. He's so handy and creative! He didn't even have plans, it's all just an idea he had in his head.

This is where it's at now. He is going to add in the doors and backdrop from our wedding, too.

I love that those items from our wedding are going to be repurposed into something fun for the backyard area. Trent has been wanting a bar back there for a while, so this will be his own little mini tiki bar out there.

There is still some clean-up and more work left to do in the yard. I need to pick up some flowers for my pots and plant them, and we will probably try a garden again this year, even though last year a lot of critters got in there and ate our plants! 

We also have to pick up some small rock to clean up both side yards. We plan on adding rock to the east side of the house, since we haven't done much with that side yet.

Meanwhile though, a lot of our plants are growing back in the yard, and the peony bushes have been growing. They haven't bloomed yet, but they are getting there. And the lilac bush in the backyard is also in bloom. I don't know that I've ever shared pictures of it on here before. But the flowers are so pretty:

They also smell so good, and they seem to attract a lot of bees and butterflies. The bush separates our yard from our neighbors' - it's right in between.

Yesterday was definitely a beautiful spring day and almost felt like summer! It gets me excited to work on more projects around the yard, and work on the house more this year. Because Lord knows, we have a LOT of work to be done!