Adventures in Gardening

Being first time homeowners this is Antoine's and my first Spring in the house. Each season seems to bring a new and exciting set of "firsts". Last night we ate our first home cooked meal outside on our little patio. We sat under the trees, beers in hand, and relaxed taking in the quiet of our little slice of heaven. It was wonderful in so many different and new ways. With each new season we fall further into the realization that this is in fact our house. It's all ours, no one elses! And each and every time we meet this realization we are reminded of just how happy and content we are in our new home! Sure, home ownership has its downfalls. When the garage door started to fall apart it was our job to fix it. When the evil cats from Hell turned off our furnace we had to call a repair man to figure out what was the cause and if it could be remedied. But, having a new house together also means dreaming about remodeling our bathroom someday, what tile we'd want and what color of paint would look best on the walls.

It means mowing our lawn with the push mower I got Antoine for Christmas (see above). It means making dinner and then sitting in our candlelit dining room enjoying a delicious and romantic meal together. And it also means planting a garden, our first adventure into the world of planting/gardening.

Important fact: I might have grown up on a farm, but I do not have a green thumb, so get that little misconception out of your pretty little heads right now! I'm infamous when it comes to killing plants. But I turned 25 this year. I'm getting older and wiser, so hopefully my plant killing days are behind me. Hopefully!

Over the last couple weeks we've been trying to prep for our garden...well, actually, gardens. Our backyard is small, but we think it has a lot of potential!

Here's an areal view of our backyard just after we bought it. The backyard hadn't had any real attention for probably more than 5 years!

Here's a picture of our patio area from a couple of weeks ago just after Antoine cleared out a bunch of the overgrowth. In the photo above you can kind of see this area in the upper right hand corner just above the cherry trees. Look at all that overgrowth (way to go Antoine!).

We're planning on planting four separate gardens/beds: three flower beds (one next to the back of the house, one next to the side of the garage, and one surrounding our patio area) and a raised veggie garden at the back of the garage. The flower beds will be filled with perennials like

salvia

black eyed susans

shasta daisies

purple coneflowers

assorted floxglove

rock soapwort

(Please note that these pictures were swiped off the internet and our flowers will probably not look this good.)

The veggie garden will consist of broccoli, carrots, sweet onions, mini sweet peppers, bibb lettuce and silver queen sweet corn. And here's the kicker: we're starting our gardens from seeds!! Yes, you heard me correctly. Antoine and I, aka Inexperienced Gardener #1 and #2, are planning on planting flowers and veggies from seeds for the first time ever! We're rolling with the punches and waiting to see if anything grows. If not, then bummer...but we'll move on. And maybe next year we'll take it easier on ourselves and start with plants or at least veggies that are a little easier to grow! But if things actually grow...SWEET!

Tonight we will hopefully be starting to plant either the flower gardens (which Antoine pre-tilled yesterday) or the veggie garden. We've got the top soil, the manure, the coffee grounds from Sbux and the miracle grow...now hopefully between the two of us we can come up with a green thumb...or at the very least a pinkie!! I'll try to keep you all posted with pictures of our progress, if there is any! Wish us luck!