Our 2017 Garden | Step 1: Buy Plants 🌱

First of all, it is only Tuesday evening and I already feel like it's been a long week. 😂 Most of that is due to the fact that June's had a rough couple of days. She just seems... off. Extra tender. Extra frustrated. Extra everything. Poor girl! Added with the fact that we'd planned to start potty training yesterday, and have since thrown that out the window entirely because she just cries and cries and says "Noooo please" when we ask her to try sitting on the potty, I am also feeling extra tender. Extra frustrated. Extra everything. Oi vey. 😂 That's just motherhood sometimes. I am learning to lean into it and be okay with tossing everything out the window and just enjoying what the day has for me instead. One of the ways I am able to do that is by taking my real camera along for the "every day things" June and I do together. It helps me focus on how beautiful the little things really are.

Today's plan: buy stuff for our garden. 😍 Last year we ripped up part of the parking area at the back of our yard that we never use and put in four raised gardening beds! You can see those before/progress photos here!

June and I only grabbed a few of the basics for our garden today, as I'm sure I'll go back several times yet to purchase more once I've begun to fill the beds and figure out the design.

I picked up some yellow and red cherry tomatoes, a few pepper plants, green beans and cucumbers. June picked up 18 containers of Golden Lemon Thyme and had to be convinced that we only need one. "Dat one" she'd say and point to all the pots we "needed for our cart". 

I kept trying to get June to smell the herbs, but she'd either get it too close to her face and get upset (I told you she's tender these days), or she'd rub the leaves with one hand but then sniff the other! Ha ha ha! Which reminds me of this kid from America's Funniest Home Videos who licks his one hand but then uses the other to turn the magazine page. 😂

It's been so beautiful in Manheim the last few days, so I was happy to let Junie wander around outside before we paid for our items. After all, there was a giant gravel area outside and how. can. you. not. play in it?

So, there you have it. Just a little bit of what my day looked like. I am really looking forward to planting everything we bought today and seeing how the entire garden turns out. I learned a lot last year about which areas get the best sun, what we wished we'd planted more of, and which flowers did well in the heat. I'll share more with ya'll when I've started planting!

Are you planting anything this year? I'd love to know!

Also, if you're local - check out The Flower Wagon in Manheim, PA. Crazy low prices on the best stuff!

A Trip to the Greenhouse

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel totally crazy because it's still cold, and wintery, and everyone I know (ourselves included) is sick right now!?! Gah!

June, bless her heart, asks to go to the park every single day, but it's just too cold, or too wet to be able to play outside.. So, this morning, she and I took a little trip to one of the local greenhouses - to breathe in the fresh air, see all of the pretty plants, and get some of her energy out. I think I needed it just as much as she did. I just kept saying to her, "Look! Everything is soooo green! And, not... dead." Then she started saying, "Dead?" and pointing to different things and I figured, ehhh... I better stop saying that. 😂

She stayed in the cart for a little while, but quickly realized there were puddles to splash around in and wanted out immediately! She also kept asking me if I needed to put the "lid" (lens cap) back on my camera. So cute.

June will be two years old next weekend (gasp!!), and all she wants to talk about is colors. Colors of crayons, and birds, and food, and blankets, and animals. Needless to say, she was pumped up about all the different cactus colors. She just stood there pointing at each one, saying "ohhh, pink!", "ohhh, yeyloww", "ohhh, bwue!"

(Note: her sweet little cheeks with a rash from being sick.)

We stomped in puddles for a long time, walked up and down each aisle over and over again, and she pointed out every single lawn ornament animal and made the sounds to go with them. 😂 Ribbit, ribbit!

Eventually we wandered over to where all of the planters and pots are, and she pointed out each color, clapping for herself when she got it right. I dreamt about filling my front and pack porch with 5,000 potted plants. Seems like a realistic goal.

If you're ever looking for something to do with your kids on a rainy day, or when it's just too cold out to function, check out your local greenhouse! I always leave feeling refreshed, with a brown bag full of plants. No complaints here. 

June and I visited Esbenshade's Garden Center and Greenhouse in Lititz, PA. But you can Google "Greenhouses Near Me" and find your own!

A Sink Full of Veggies

With August well underway, our garden is in full swing producing beautiful dahlias and zinnias, plus delicious cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, jalapeños, peppers, onions, potatoes! June loves when I wash off the days fresh veggies in the sink and was begging to stand at the sink and see them when she woke up from her nap the other day.

June quickly learned that those potatoes turn into delicious rosemary fries and holds out the potatoes and goes "friiieshhhh!" She also gathers up the potatoes and sits on the couch with them.. just holding them in her lap. We call them her "couch potatoes." 😂 She also eats the cherry tomatoes right off the vine like little grapes and squints her eyes with delight when the tomato pops in her mouth!

Side note, have you ever planted potatoes before? This was my first year and I loved it! I wish I had done like 5x the amount! They're so good and easy to take care of. Next year I'm definitely going to plant more.

Our Garden / Before Photos

I have always wanted a garden. Like, for yearssss. But every Spring, I forget to plant the things I want, or if I do remember to plant a few things, I've completely forgotten about them come mid-summer and they're all scraggly and literally laying down on the ground like we can't even. To give myself some credit though, I have transplanted quite a few ferns, hostas and other shade-loving perennials from my parent's house to our yard, and those do awesome every year! But our actual food garden has always been lacking one thing - my time. Seriously, if you want to learn a few lessons on patience and "good things come to those who wait", plant a garden. Have you ever seen how tiny carrot seeds are!?!?! They're practically invisible! So you just gotta dump out the package into the dirt and hope that in 3 months time they've turned into beautiful, Martha-Stewart-cover-worthy rainbow carrots. Things I planted in April are only now starting to show up. Geeesh!

Months ago, when we were having an unusually warm spring day, I was in the backyard with my friend/neighbor Kim, when she pointed to the (what I would call terribly embarrassing) overgrown area at the back of our yard and said "Oh, is that your garden?" 😂 Obviously that's why I keep someone like Kim around, because she believes that even the worst sections of my yard will somehow bloom into something amazing and edible, which is excellent for my self esteem, but alas, I had to laugh and say "No! Ha ha! That's our 'parking area'". However, it got me thinking. We NEVER park back there. Like, ever. So why not make it into a garden area? That would allow us to keep more of our grass/yard and give us space to plant stuff! Win, win! When we first moved into our house, the previous owners had installed six square garden beds right in the middle of the whole yard, which was not very functional. We tore those out almost immediately and the grass has grown back in quite nicely giving us a cute little spot of grass for June to play in.

Here is what that back area looked like before T.J. got started clearing an area for the garden beds. As you can see, our backyard backs up against the local lumber yard, which was really convenient when we needed to get stuff for our garden boxes!

It took us only a few hours to dig up the front portion of the parking area and prep it for the beds to be installed. And T.J. was looking pretty, pretty, cool in a tank top -- just saying.

About a week after we prepped the beds, we built the super easy garden boxes and filled them with dirt from our compost pile! Unfortunately I forget to take pictures of the actual boxes being built and filled. Oh well! But now that a few things are starting to pop up you can see the garden bed layout! We took some of the extra gravel from the parking area and moved it up in between the boxes to help control the weeds and mud.

Some of the plants I started myself from seeds months ago, and others I purchased at our local greenhouse just before planting.

In just the few weeks that have passed, you can see that the GIANT tree in the backyard has leaves now, and many of the other things around our yard are loving all the rain. In the words of Phyllis (Lapin) Vance, "The plants are gonna love this."

Just this past Friday, I planted a handful of flowers and herbs in the box closest to our back deck. I am really looking forward to having fresh herbs right beside our grill, and colorful flowers to look at while we sit out back and enjoy our summer watermelon and iced coffees. C'moooonnn summer!

I apologize for the glommy photos, it was literally raining while I planted these and took the pictures.

I am so excited to watch everything grow over the next few months and continue to clean up our yard and outdoor living areas so we can enjoy them more of the year. I really, really believe that living in a home you're proud of, in a home that brings you joy deep in your being, is so valuable to our lives and families - and your yard is a beautiful, living extension of that. I hope you'll take a little bit of time to plant a few things for yourself, too! If you have any questions you think I could answer, please leave a comment! I'd love to know what you're planting or hoping to grow!

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.”

— Luther Burbank