Garden!

The last 2 years we have planted our garden the Saturday before Mother's Day. We were a little worried the weather wouldn't cooperate this year, but it turned out to be a fairly nice day and we were able to plant our garden! I love this time of year. Two years ago, our garden was fantastic! Everything did well and we had way more produce than we could consume. Last year, we kind of neglected our little garden. We had good intentions, but it just didn't work out. We planted it 2 weeks after Eli was born, and we just weren't consistent in our watering until it was too late. We were too busy with a new baby and then putting up our fence and all that stuff. So we are determined to do better this year!

We spent about 4-5 hours outside working on the garden on Saturday. We don't have any fancy raised beds or anything, but we have four sections cut out. Everything was really overgrown with weeds and grass, so we set to work clearing it all out. That took the most time. I'm not sure why we decided to do that all by hand, but we did. So several hours later, we got every last weed and blade of grass pulled up and then we mixed in some manure and some of our very own compost! Oh my, was this beautiful. We've been building our compost pile for the last couple years, and we finally used it. It is dark and rich and lush and gorgeous. Then we planted our seeds and plants, watered, and observed our hard work. :)

When we first went out, it was a little chilly, but then it warmed up. (Eli loves to "walk" like this. I don't think it will be too long until he's really walking).
Taking off...already ditched one shoe....
So if we zoom in on the above picture, you can see this overgrown mess here. There are onions and garlic in there from last year that we just kept in the ground. They've been growing really well, along with lots of weeds and grass.
But here you can see that same spot (from a different angle). You can actually see the plants! Amazing.
And here's another shot:

We planted basil, parley, chives, cilantro, green & red bell peppers, serrano peppers, jalapeno peppers, roma tomatoes, celebrity tomatoes, big beef tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, crookneck squash, and zucchini. Woohoo! I can't wait! Every time I cook something now I always think, "Oh I can't wait until I can make this again with fresh [fill in the blank]..." So we're pretty excited.

Eli was an angel all day too. He loves to be outside! He just plops himself down on the grass and entertains himself for days by pulling up grass, squishing dirt clods, etc. I only had to pull a rock out of his mouth once! It also helped that he took a 2 hour nap that afternoon, right during the time we were working on the garden. Thank you child!What a helper. And yes, that's a bag of manure behind him. So what? It's mostly empty.
Tuckered out after a long day:
That night we all showered/bathed and then went out to dinner. I certainly didn't feel like cooking and we decided it was a garden-is-in celebration and an early Mother's Day celebration. That's justified, right? That's what I tell myself anyway.

So that was our Saturday! Yesterday was nice too. Jeremy didn't have meetings in the morning so he made me breakfast in bed, which was very delicious. It was nice to have him around. He did have to stay after church for a few hours, so that was a bummer (especially since I made a nice dinner and he got home way late without letting me know and dinner was on the table for 40 minutes getting cold. Come on babe. That's why we have cell phones - so things like this don't happen. Oops). But that's okay. He's forgiven and I still love him. :)

I hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day! I'm so glad I have such a wonderful mother who taught me so many wonderful things. I love you mom! Jeremy has an amazing mother too and I'm so glad I get to learn from her now too!