Veggie Garden- Then and Now

I just realized that I haven't updated you all on the vegetable garden! Silly me.

We put in the raised gardens, and after Memorial Day I went to work on putting in all of the plants that were growing in the house. I learned a huge lesson in gardening when I put too much plant food on them, and....uh...."burned" them. I learned this term through the process of killing all of my plants. But somehow, I managed to keep them alive enough to be salvagable. 

And then it hailed.

Three times.

Some of the hail was baseball size.

And, let's just say that's not too conducive to an already on-the-brink-of-survival garden.

And yet again, luck was on my side. It only fully took out a couple of my tomato plants and all of the strawberries. But the onions, shallots, and remaining tomatoes are doing wonderfully!

Here is pre-storm garden:

And the amazing tomato cages that Eric made out of leftover chicken wire! What a creative genius he is.

 

And here is the garden now!

The hail did take out most all of my flowers (that I had planted in pots the day prior to the first storm). Eric and I quickly learned that when we see signs of a storm, take every single pot under the carport for safety. 

After the death of my flowers, I went back to work to replant pots, using mainly seeds. And this is where they all landed- as we don't have another surface to keep them in the sunlight!

 

New life for an old tree

Why I didn't take a before picture, I'm not sure. But I'll tell you what, this project was much needed. 

We have what we call the leaning tree in the front yard. 

It's unique. We like it.

Essentially what we did was widen the base of the tree to give it more room, and plant some Gladiolus bulbs to give it a little extra pop.

To do this, we shoveled out all of the weeds and grass from the base, and repositioned the stone boundary. Then we laid weed barrier fabric.

Then I poked holes in the fabric and planted the bulbs. They should come in the next week or so!

And finally, we covered it all with red mulch.

And there you have it!

 

P.S.- What do you think of the new blog background?

Lately...

I've been pretty MIA recently, mostly because work has really picked up for me. I've been trying to juggle a variety of things when I get home from the workday and have found that my motivation for getting back on the computer is slim. BUT, I also love blogging so I should keep it up.

We've also had visitors and made a trip back to KS, which has cut down on my blog time. Our good friends Hannah and Kyle visited a couple weekends ago. We had the best time together! It was so refreshing to see them after so long and great to show them our new life up here. Eric and I appreciate it so much when our friends and family make the trek up here. We always love to show people a good time. Then we went back to Lawrence for Michaela's bridal shower, which was such a great time! We were able to see several friends and Michaela and I spent some quality time together. It's always so much fun to go visit Lawrence!

On the home front- Eric and I have purchased a fence and it will arrive in it's millions of pieces this Friday. We are very excited to have a privacy fence for Barkley! We're hoping that cuts down on his barking. We will, however, miss meeting our neighbors at the fence to chat and have their son play with Barkley. I guess we'll just have to go around the block. We're looking forward to landscaping and creating a patio back there sometime in the near future. I'll be sure to post pictures of the progress.

I've started teaching piano lessons to a neighbor girl. It is so much fun and she is such a wonderful student. Instead of having her parents pay, we're asking that she do little jobs for us...like water the garden once a week. I think it's a great trade off and she's always offered to help us.

I have been working a great deal on the indoor garden. I'm starting to learn more about when to plant up here, how to start your first garden, AND how to not over-water plants! yahoo! It's coming along well and I'm so excited to start putting plants outside. People usually start in May...or when the first sign of frost is gone. Last May it snowed! Uck.

Here's a little taste of what we've been up to...

 I cleaned out the flower bed, but needed Eric's help for the large shrub. We went to town on the roots and realized that they were MUCH bigger than expected. It was going to take a chain to get those babies out.

 Keep in mind that this was last Saturday when it was 80 degrees. I got a fierce sunburn that day. And on Sunday? Well, we had a blizzard. That's right, it snowed all day long. Oh boy...this Nebraska weather is something else.

 The neighborhood came out to help, hehe

 ....and now for the gaping whole in the flower bed!

 To be continued.