Book Junkie: Gardening Book Reviews

I love getting dirty!  Digging, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting.... its so simple, so rhythmic, and so rewarding.

 Here are my favorite books on gardening:

Let The Sun Shine In

When we planned our yard, the raised bed was in full sun.  Fast forward 4 years later, and the house next door has been vacant for 2 years.  During that time, the vacant-house backyard has sprouted dandelions 8 feet tall and three (what I believe to be) poplar trees ON the fence.  Literally.  Not only were these trees shading my summer garden, they were threatening to ruin the new(ish) fence between the two yards. 

  

Let Them Eat Grapes

Just harvested the first crop of grapes!

YUM!

Papa's making a guest appearance

Well I'm not much of a writer but I do like taking pictures and video. So for my first guest post,  I've decided to upload a few videos.

The girls "helping out" in the garden

This video is from the 4th of July. Notice Punkin', in blue, running right up to people to throw her water balloons.  Bunny, in red, is doing the same.  Brave girls!

Ends with a "bang!"... literally

p.s. word of advice to anyone adding video to your blogs: use YouTube and don't just insert video from Blogger, much better quality. You would figure it would be the same considering Google owns both companies but oh well.

Summer Garden

It seems that no matter how improved our yard gets, or how much more we are able to plant than the previous year, I just can't be satiated!  More, more, more... that's my motto when it comes to the summer garden.  I'm already planning for what can be added after summer, but for now here is a preview of the summer garden.  Its been slow to start, but we are finally getting some flowers and fruit!  If you need me, you can find me in the garden... waiting, impatiently, to harvest.

The strawberries found a new home this year in between the flagstone... they love it!

Planting the Summer Garden

The Sunday after the Fairytale Town adventure, we decided the summer garden had to go in. So, in the morning (after Papa graciously let me sleep passed 8 am), we headed to the nursery and picked out plants! 

The ones that made the cut:

Tomatoes: Black Zebra, Caspian Pink, Heirloom Pineapple, and a cherry tomato

Walla Walla sweet onions

Serrano peppers

Bell Peppers: Canary Yellow, Blue Jam (purple in color), and Sweet Spanish Red

Zucchini - but only two plants this year because the 6 we planted last year was a bit much!

Zebra eggplant

Lemon Cucumber

Quinalt Strawberries (of Kyla's choosing)

Cilantro, parsley, mint, basil and sage: all to compliment the chives, oregano and rosemary that we already have.

I'm so excited I can taste it! Literally.

Max, chillin'

It's been a busy time

The weather has gotten a lot warmer here and most days the temp is over 90 degrees. The weather had kept us girls in the house quite a bit this week, as has Punkin's cold, but I hope to venture out and go "smimmin" soon.


The agapanthus are blooming in the front yard, standing tall and proud in front of the house and our grapes on the side yard are growing like crazy and even have some fruit on them. The tomatoes are almost ready to eat and I harvested our first zuchini this morning - its huge! 

The picture doesn't do it justice

We took the girls to the doctor yesterday. Punkin' Pie weighs 23lbs. 5oz. and Bunny-boo is a whopping 13lbs. 15oz. (she has almost doubled her birth weight)! Neither Papa nor I can remember their lengths, but they were both in the 60th percentile for length, 40th for weight and 10th for head circumference.

We have lots of pictures and some video to post so I'll try to keep them coming! Enjoy!

The weekend the earth moved...sort of

So, somewhere along the way we thought we wanted to make some changes to the backyard. Little did we know our small backyard could be so much work.