Meg vs. The Garden: A very small harvest...

Check out my harvest of snow peas!

Yeah, that was it. There are still maybe 3 more on the plants that could possibly get big enough to bother eating. I have a feeling that all my harvests, except for maybe the zuchinni, will be like this. It's my first garden; what can I say? I planted these late and it got warm early, so I can't be too surprised that my snow peas were not particularly abundant. The plant looks downright sad; I think it's time to pull these and my lettuce/spinach out and toss in something more summer-friendly. At least I tried!

These were very tasty with Ranch. Totally worth a bucks' worth of seeds.

Meg vs. The Back Yard: Garden #4

Monday: Finish mixing soil in the side yard planter and plant the rest of the melon plants. Put away/cover new fire wood.

I have got to do something more visually stimulating so it will be worth posting a picture on the blog! For now, here is a picture of our first strawberries of the season. In blurry, chubby toddler hands no less!

Meg vs. The Back Yard: More of the same, to infinity!

Tuesday: Weed, cut branches, and re-fill the yard waste bin. Get another planter ready for planting.

I did this as far as I could; I realized I was out of soil for the last above-ground planter, and all I had was Amend for the in-ground planters that aren't really close to ready yet. So I cleared a spot and set up the planter, and it's ready for dumping and planting. I'll add the mix to my shopping list for tomorrow.

The rest of my time was spent battling a gnarly rose tree at the end of the side yard. I think it is a normal rose bush that was left to itself for 30 years; it is crazy! Lots of dead growth and ivy, both living and dead, wrapped up with it. But the side yard is almost clear! Now to decide what to fill it back up with...

Meg vs. The Back Yard: Weeding and more weeding

Tuesday: Clear a place to plant sunflowers and put a planter in the side yard. Re-fill the green waste bin!

Clear part of the side-yard. Check!

Fill up the bin. Check plus!

Un-cover an existing planter that sits exactly in the sunny area. Check Check! There are actually pavers and rocks surrounding the planter, but you wouldn't know it by looking.

Verify that someone actually grew something here aside from weeds once. Checkity-check!  (It was rosemary - only a step above a weed, but I'll take it.)

Clean up the milk spills, dish pile, and crushed animal cookies under the furniture because my awesome mother-in-law will be here in 2 days, followed by my wonderful father-in-law 2 days after that: I suppose I had better get to that.

Meg vs. The Garden: Starting seedlings

Saturday: Plant melon seeds in grow trays with the boys.

Clearly this was not today's goal, since today is Friday. But I ended up having a friend's kids over all day, so I thought that cleaning the garage was perhaps not the best idea with between 4 and 6 kids running around at different times of the day. Instead, they all helped me start a few seeds. The kids were excited, the job only took about 5 minutes (just about the length of their attention spans), and everyone was happy. So far we have watermelon, cantaloupe, and corn. I'll do some more as we move further into spring. I am confident that I am capable of killing any and all of them, but for the kids' sakes I hope they grow!

Meg vs. Decor and the Garden: Shopping!

Thursday: Go thrifting for a large mirror and other decorations. Buy seeds to start for garden.

This seems like it would be an easy goal for a day, but it means either dragging two toddlers shopping all over the place or figuring out how to leave them at home. Lucky for me, John had the day off.

We all took a trip to Home Depot in the morning. We picked up a ceiling fan for our room, looked at bathroom fans (we ended up ordering on Amazon), and I grabbed a whole pile of seeds as fast as I could since by then the kiddos were DONE.

I was able to escape during nap time to do my thrifting. Sadly, I found no mirror to my liking. All the thrift mirrors were surprisingly pricey and not particularly attractive. I could get the same thing for the same price new at Ross. We want something with some visual interest, perhaps round or oval to offset all the straight lines and right angles in the room. And perhaps something I can paint a bright color to wake things up a bit. But nothing yet.

What I did find (at Ross; I was getting desperate, and it was next to Goodwill) was a king size sheet set in the same pattern (though a slightly different color) as my bench fabric. I think they will make fine drapes and accents for the living room.

Meg vs. The Backyard: Clearing and planting

Monday:  Clear a place and plant the boysenberries.

Well, I technically did this one, but not exactly how I originally intended. After an hour in the backyard, the "place" we had decided on for the boysenberries looked like this:

After an hour or so more, it looked like this:

And the waste bin looked like this:

So much for my other goal this week to get rid of more of the tree!

I decided that with all the roots and trash in ground, I should probably do more to clean it out before planting anything. And then I second-guessed our decision to plant the berries next to the house (I am nothing if not indecisive). So finally I just did this:

I both cleared a place and planted the boysenberries. I love buying time for more indecisiveness =).

Aren't you jealous of how splendid our back yard looks already?

Overgrown side yard, complete with decomposing cardboard

The trees my hubby wants me to leave alone (yeah right)

 Ivy everywhere! I am thisclose to convincing John that it is a noxious weed and shouldn't be his favorite landscaping feature.

 One of two dead trees.

 Dirty deck, shaky trellis.

 Junk.

p.s. That bit about our splendid yard was a joke.

Meg vs. The Yard: Our first plants

Saturday:  Go to nursery, get advice, and buy plants/supplies for square-foot gardens and fertilizer for fruit trees. Start putting planters out. 

As it turns out, I am a couple of weeks early for planting garden vegetables. That was a relief, because I kept worrying that I was too late since it has been so warm recently. So I came home with nine bags of soil (I don't trust what's in our yard, what with squirrels, cats, raccoons, and probably lead paint), a flat of strawberry plants, and two thornless boysenberry starts. The little guy and I pulled out our upside-down planters that we found on clearance at Wal-Mart and planted the strawberries, I pulled out the planter boxes, and now we have a couple of weeks to plan the rest of our garden.

For some reason I completely forgot about the fertilizer for the trees.


Another week done! It is nice to be making progress, even if it's slow going. I think next week I'll ease up a bit, because I thoroughly exhausted myself this week.

Meg vs. The Yard: Potting Trees

Thursday:  Re-pot fruit trees left by the previous owners.

We noticed three baby citrus trees--a meyer lemon, a naval orange, and a mexican lime--in our yard when we were doing our walk-through of this house, and assumed the owners would take them. But apparently they came with the house! We have always wanted fruit trees, but weren't sure if we were going to bother with this house since there are so many other things needing our attention. But since we had them, we decided to pot them for now to give us time and flexibility to move them around as we do the rest of the yard. I bought the pots and soil months ago but haven't taken the 30 minutes to go out and put them in. The guy at Home Depot said that a pot twice the size of the original container should be sufficient for a couple of years' growth. And these trees are barely twigs, so I think they have plenty of room for now.

Before:  Can you tell a little one was playing with my camera?

After:

Definitely worth 1/2 an hour during nap time. Who knows if they'll get big enough to fruit before we leave this place, but at least they have room to try!