Seedlings

The weather has been very rainy the last few weeks, but Spring is right around the corner. It's still technically planting season, but I still have to get the garden plots ready. Our soil is kind of crummy, so I need to beef it up with some compost and fertilizer. Hoping to attack that project this weekend. For now, I just have these adorable little seedlings sprouted on my kitchen counter. I'm so proud of them, even though I know that it doesn't exactly take much to sprout seedlings. You can sprout seeds on a wet paper towel, for Pete's sake. Still! This represents the beginning of my garden! These seedlings are the beginning of several tomato plants, a couple cucumbers, some basil and some rosemary. They'll probably go into the ground sometime in the next couple weeks.

While we're waiting for the vegetables and herbs to be planted, we've kept ourselves busy planting flowers. Last night Joey, Kristin and I planted several sunflowers and cosmos in a few different locations around the yard. I also have some nasturtium to plant, but didn't get to that yet. In addition, we also have a fairly large group of "volunteer" sunflowers that have come up in the area where we used to have a bird feeder. They're already over 3 feet tall! I have no idea what they'll look like when they finally bloom, but they have several flower heads on them already. I love watching the garden come alive!

Progress

We've been working in the yard, and it's slowly taking shape. We've cleared out a lot of the dead and dying plants, and removed the wisteria from what will eventually be the grape arbor. If you recall, when we started out the area by the back fence looked like this:But after much hard work, now it looks more like this:I have to say I was mighty impressed with Matt when he was tearing out the wisteria. It had a huge stick base, and I thought we'd be digging at it forever to get it out of there. But Matt managed to pull it out of the ground, roots and all, with his bare hands. Impressive!

The Only Thing Growing in my Garden (for now!)

I've been diligently working on the back yard every weekend, trying to trim things back, pull weeds, and generally get ready to plan a real garden. Other than the orange trees, the yard was looking pretty barren. Then this week, our strange little rose bush bloomed:I call it a strange little rose bush because it's basically just one long stem with a big bunch of leaves and blossoms at the top. It appears to be a shoot that grew off of the now-dead main rose bush. The roses are huge, gorgeous, and smell fantastic. They're visible from the kitchen window, and I love looking out and seeing a burst of color out there. I'd planned to have some flowers in the yard, but I was picturing them more in the front, with the vegetables and herbs in the back. But maybe we'll have to put some flowers in the back yard, too. There's actually a book I've seen called Roses love Garlic that talks about companion planting. I'll definitely have to check it out!

Projects

One of the things that I looked forward to the most about having a house of our own was having a yard. I always wanted to have a garden of my own. A little vegetable patch, maybe some melons or berries, some herbs, and some flowers. Of course, that was all just little fantasy visions in my head. Making them a reality is definitely going to take some work! And, of course, we don't exactly have a huge yard to work with. But I'm still optimistic.

This past weekend, we spent some time in the back yard, getting a feel for what we have to work with and what we'd like to accomplish. We also picked a bunch of oranges off our two trees. We actually picked about twice the amount pictured. And there are still a ton of ripening ones on the tree! We were able to trade our oranges for lemons from a friend's tree. Eventually, we're hoping to set up a kind of gardening co-op with a few different friends, where we all grow certain things and share. Hooray for the barter system!

Our yard is in pretty sad shape. We really need to rebuild our fence, for one thing. It's practically falling down in some spots. And the raised beds on the side yard are shored up with railroad ties that are crumbling and rotten. We want to tear out all the railroad ties and replace them with stone or brick. Along the back fence right now there's a lot of dead or dying plants:Lots of stuff to tear out and clean up! We really have our work cut out for us. But I'm looking forward to working on these various yard projects, just the same. Since I'm not sure how long cleaning the yard is really going to take, I'm going to start my gardening efforts by planting some things in containers. I'll start with some herbs, maybe. I love the idea of snipping fresh herbs from the garden to use in my cooking!

As we make progress, I'll post more pictures! Stay tuned!