The Green Thumb Has Arrived

NOT REALLY

I have decided that now is the time to share with you, my friends, our source of nutrition, our organic bounty, our prize winning produce; also known as, our first garden, a possible failure, an 8 by 8 square foot bed stocked full of what could possibly become death.

I have wanted to plant my own garden for a while now. Last year I never really got around to it so this year I started planning in early March. I knew I wanted to make it happen, this "square foot garden" I had envisioned. So, one Saturday Ben and I got up early and got to work plotting out the ground, planning how much soil we would need, and all of that fun stuff. Keep in mind that my only garden experience is from when I was around 10 years old and mom and dad let Cara, Matt, and me pick out as many plants as we could stuff into a 2 by 4 foot area. Needless to say, I knew enough to know I liked it, that's about it. So we picked up the supplies (this sounds easy but it took us most of the day for various reasons I will not bore you with) and headed to the house.

Allow me to interject here to remind you that this was the weekend of the pollen attack. Notice that our entire porch is yellow. Oh, and we now have a fire pit in the middle of the chairs. We are not weirdos that just randomly place 4 chairs in a square staring at each other with no table or anything in the center. Yes, you're right, we already had the fire pit but someone borrowed it, burned pumpkins in it, and didn't return it for a while. And back to the garden...

So, from the ground up, we built our garden. We even added lime. I hear that's good for the soil. We also bought a book appropriately titled, "Alabama Gardening."

We spent most of the day just creating the bed. I say "we" but the pictures are all of Ben. Ok, so he did most of the hard work but I did load several wheel barrows full of top soil and dump them in there. He really couldn't have done it without me. Especially lifting those big railway ties. Ok, well he did that part by himself. I don't know how.

The next day, Ben had to go to work so that left me to purchase the plants. I picked out Basil, Parsley, Squash, Bell Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Strawberries, Mint, Rosemary, and Zucchini. I know what you are probably thinking: how is all that going to fit? Well, I made it fit.

And No, buying full grown tomato plants from Publix is not cheating. I had to have some success here people!

So, I somehow managed to make it all fit. However, I got a little worried that I was planting everything too close so I put the mint and rosemary in pots and left a little space in the garden in case something needed to be moved. Oh, and Onions. I also planted onions.

Here is the garden after a couple of weeks of growth. Planting the garden meant that we also had to have a fence put up to keep the neighbors from stealing our produce.

Not long after the "planting", mom came into town to spend some time with me helping me out around the house and yard. I am so thankful that she did! I don't know what it is about moms, but mine always manages to get way more done in one day than I could do in a week. The one day that she was here, she helped me clean out and organize my closet (a huge job in itself), took me to drop off my old clothes at the mission, loaded up my car with all my returns and dry cleaning, wanted to shop, but I was too tired, took me home and washed all my laundry and did my dishes while I took a nap. Then the next day while she was leaving town she randomly discovered a farmers market in Montgomery, stopped there, bought me a ton of plants, came back to my house and positioned them all in my yard and on plant stands. The picture above is a close up of the blooms on the vine mom bought to climb up my fence. This next picture of my front yard is for you, mom. We still have some work to do, but it is coming along.

I wish I could say that the back yard is really coming along. However, the beautiful hydrangea bushes mom bought me have yet to be planted. One of them has been completely burned up by Pete's urine. I kid you not. I came outside one day and it looked as though it had been lit on fire. I thought it had been attacked by a horrible fungus so I moved it to the middle of the yard away from the other plants. Not long afterwards, I saw Pete run over and hike his leg on it. Nope. It was not a fungus.

Then there's this issue. The digging. We weren't exactly sure who the guilty party was until I found this (pictured above). It is a teddy bear (or the shell of a teddy bear whose stuffing has been ripped out) dropped in a whole dug by an animal. And who else carries around a teddy bear but this guy....

Berkley is pictured above, pre haircut of course, with our neighbor's new puppy. Berkley LOVES the puppy but we make him lay down to play with him since he is so much bigger. The puppy is probably terrified.

And I leave you with this.... A picture of our very first morsel. It was delicious! Hopefully there will be many more to come! It really did help out buying those plants with tomatoes already on them.