Love me a garden

Remember this post from back in April?

When our new garden looked like this?

And here, when we made a little progress with the planters?

Our garden last year was in the back corner of the backyard. It was our first time planting a garden in a yard (instead of on our roof deck in the city) and we made some rookie mistakes.

This year we decided to build a bigger garden right up next to the deck and house. This way, we'd have super easy access to it.

Today, our garden looks like this:

I know many people out there have green thumbs and enjoy tending a garden. I do not have a green thumb. At all! But I do love eating fresh vegetables and fruit from it each day as well as storing up food for the winter.

I LOVE being able to go right outside each day and pick lettuce for our salads and kale for our smoothies. My boys cannot get enough of kale smoothies.

In case you're interested, I usually make them like this:

Kale (de-stemmed)

Plain yogurt (vanilla is also good but we avoid yogurt with flavoring around here)

Homemade almond milk or regular milk

Bananas (frozen or regular)

Peanut butter

Flax seed

I modify the amounts of each ingredient based on whatever we have on hand and what ratios seem to make it taste good. I'm not a big measuring person when it comes to cooking.... which is why I'm terrible at baking!

They gobble that up like it's green ice cream! For a while my picky eater wouldn't eat any vegetables, but he'd eat almost anything in a smoothie so this has been golden!

Our little worker bees love to tend to the garden. We've had to work on not overwatering. Having a garden has also been a great opportunity to further discuss food an where it comes from. Just today, Colin said that he would plant me some garden burgers (a favorite of mine) if I wanted, which was so sweet... but obviously shows that we're still working on understanding what all can grow in a garden.

Ah but if only garden burgers could grow in a garden, it would save me some prep and cooking time!!!

Rockstar

Our weekend was pretty good. Saturday, as predicted, was beautiful! The first thing I did on Saturday morning was grab a cup of coffee and run around opening all the windows. Finally, we could open the windows and feel the wonderful warm breeze. It was delightful...

That is until all four of our darling children started melting down for various reasons. All at once. Screaming, hollering, falling to the floor dramatically and crying. The timing was almost comical except that it wasn't. I was just sure you could hear them all over the neighborhood.

So I ran around closing all the windows again. Ha! Perhaps we'll stick with central air this summer.

Finally we got outside and they calmed down. Fresh air is a beautiful thing.

We worked a lot on the garden which is coming along. Chris was able to get the garden beds completed. No more dirt pile! Yay!

Next up, we need to build a fence to go around it, put mulch or something along the paths and of course plant the seeds. I love to build a vertical lettuce garden out of gutters up the side of the house, but that may be pushing it this year. We'll see.

The absolute highlight of my weekend though was when Chris decided to mow the lawn.

"Okay, I'll watch the kids in the yard while you mow" I'd said.

Chris started up the mower and this apparently cued our boys to SPRINT to their lawnmowers. They  raced as fast as they could to get a mower and then fell in line behind Chris. I was laughing so hard because it was so darn cute.

"Seriously, what does it feel like to be such a rockstar in their eyes?!?" I asked Chris.

Our boys love to be like daddy! He does all the "cool" stuff. I mean, I only carried them, birthed them, and keep them fed all day long with as much home cooked food as I can make.... but that's all boring stuff.

:)

It's all good. Besides, apparently no one is as good at kissing "boo-boos" and "owies" as Mommy. That's my turf.

The start of something great?

I hope so!

We started a garden.

After days of watching the sun hit the yard to see which areas got the most sun and then factoring this in with where made most sense to plant a garden, we picked a spot. Back corner of the yard. Then I realized that you can see it from our dining room table where we eat all of our meals (so far, we've opted out of having a table in the kitchen simply because we need more kid space!). One area/ room for eating is enough for us right now. The window pretty much exactly frames the garden space.

I kind of love the fact that as we eat, we can look out onto the garden. And I hope eventually, a lot of our veggies can come from there.

The only possible thing that could thwart this plan is that I do not at all have a green thumb! But my mother in law is a fantastic gardener. I'm not sure that I'd have the courage to start up a garden if I didn't know that I'd have her to consult with and get some hands on tending from.

So here we go!

Breaking ground

Tilling it... or something like that

Everett and I supervised

 Colin and I picked up a whole bunch of veggies at the farmers market and voila!

Our own little garden.

Let's see if I can keep these veggies alive.