Etsy Mini

Friday, April 29, 2011

Garden Renovations

Everyone appreciates a good Before picture.  So I made sure to take one, before we tore everything to bits and created our dream garden.

The dream garden is still a work in progress, but we are getting there.  All the old raised beds and broken drip pipes have been dug up by Ericka's wonderful boyfriend Todd.  Everything had to be rota-tilled, because the ground was so uneven and hard.  I'm not a fan of tearing up the earth like this, but after seeing what we were working with I finally conceded.

We will be adding natural compost/manure this week and forming everything into rows so we can get out seeds and starts in the ground.  The weather is fantastic so there is no better time.

I am so excited to get everything into the ground.  I have never had a garden this big and I'm looking forward to experimenting and learning.  I am even hoping to be able to conquer some new veggies such as radishes, beets, and chard.  I have never even attempted to grow any of those before, so it will be an adventure.

Plus, there are also three mature grape vines right along the edge of the garden that will be a great learning experience.  I am going to google info about them this week, so I can get them trimmed and looking beautiful before they get much bigger.  We also have an apple tree that hangs over from the neighbors and a huge apricot tree in another part of the yard.  Just talking about all this gets my heart racing.  It's going to be a good gardening year!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Alley Adventure

My mom stopped by this afternoon to tell me about some garage sales in my neighborhood.  So we walked down the street to see if we could find any treasures.  We didn't find anything we couldn't live without, but we did find a long dirt alley that ran behind a bunches of houses.

I was curious, where does this secret pathway lead to?  A magickal portal to a land of faeries and unicorns?  Secret treasures guarded by gnomes?  Anything is possible (in my mind anyway).  We didn't find any gnomes, but we did find a big lilac bush that had some pretty visitors.  Some iridescent friends who were very faery like, also bees...less faery like, but important in the whole grand scheme of the plant human relationship and therefore ignored and left in peace to do their work.   

We kept walking and met a cute little puppy who could have singlehandedly been one of the worst guard dogs, ever.  He didn't bark and he ran to the fence to greet us so he could jump around and smile at us.  I'm pretty sure the only way he could deter strangers was by licking them to death.  So a puppy but no unicorn. There was quite a bit of alleyway left, I still had hope. 

A few houses down we spied a lemon tree literally dripping with lemons.  My mom and I both love lemons, her for lemon bars and me for lemon drops.  Both, I might add, are vital parts of a healthy well rounded diet.  I didn't want to reach over the fence and steal lemons, one of my biggest fears since childhood is getting in trouble.  This made me a pretty easy kid to raise and a model student, but also not very brave.  Thankfully, someone was conspiring in my favor today.  There was a space between the fence and the neighbor's garage.  Perfect for me to squeeze into and collect some lemons that were hanging over the fence.  The lemons were practically begging to be picked.
  
N No faeries back there either, but there was some crazy spiderwebs and an intense trail of ants.  We are respectfully left each other alone.  A few houses later the alley ended and we ended up back on the main road a block away from my house.  No secret worlds today, but hey there's always tomorrow.