Sunday, April 27, 2008

Lots of Growing

Besides having a growing baby in our home, we're also growing lots more plants! I was so excited to see the flowers we had planted as bulbs in the fall start springing up all around the yard. I think that I didn't really believe that it would work -- this is the first time we've ever had a yard to plant anything in, so I was skeptical that those brownish-yellow bulbs would ever actually yield anything like this!Also, I transplanted a lot of the vegetable and herb seedlings into bigger pots.And this is where Dave and his dad roto-tilled for a garden a few weeks ago. I think I need to mulch. Notice that you can't really tell where our lawn ends and our garden begins? That's because our yard is very very brown. I think we have to invest in some grass seed!Still no knitting or spinning going on here, but the Guru was here with Mr. Guru this weekend, and she was knitting a sock in all of her spare time. It really woke up my knitting bug again!

Saturday, April 05, 2008

A different kind of baby

Spring has sprung, and I'm getting excited to plant my first ever garden! Last fall we put in some tulips, daffodils, crocuses and other bulb flowers, and they are finally starting to sprout up. I've seen crocuses in full bloom around town, but our snow took a looooong time to melt so I'm hoping we didn't miss the blooming season.We also planted some garlic, and I "think" these are the sprouts of those bulbs, although I'm not sure -- the previous owners could have planted some other bulbs in this area too. We're excited to see what comes up in our yard.We tilled a little bit by hand to plant the garlic bulbs, but in the next week or two we are going to rent a tiller and plow up some of the yard for a real garden. I started some seedlings in my "greenhouse" a few weeks ago, and as long as Kingston doesn't feast on them, they'll go into the garden and try to become vegetables. Dave gave me a whole bunch of heirloom and organic seeds for Christmas. We have various types of tomatoes and peppers growing in the greenhouse, along with eggplant, basil, parsley and sage. Hopefully more will sprout soon, and then I also have many different seeds to sow directly into the ground. I'm not getting my hopes up that this year will be a perfect garden, because we are basically just plowing up the lawn of crab grass and tilling it over a few times. I know the soil will have to be fertilized to get it to the right PH level, and maybe we'll need some top soil too, but for this year, we're just going with the basic till and plant method. As one of my new friends in town, who is a for real farmer, says, "Plants want to grow" -- I hope they will!