All posts tagged: garden

how does our garden grow?

Published by

There are spots of our little yard that are totally overgrown.  I have a forsythia and a blackberry bush ready to take over one side of my house and a grapevine that blows my mind whenever I pull in my driveway.  How can one vine coming up out of the ground take up 15-20 feet of fence?   I love looking at it!  There are also spots that are loaded with weeds that I just can’t get to right now and I’ve found peace with it for now.  That said, I’m pretty proud of what we do have growing and that things are in relatively decent shape.  I’ll never know how Chris and I fit so much into one little yard. I had the opportunity to borrow a lens (Nikon 50mm f/1.8 prime) and play with it a bit.  It isn’t a macro lens, but I couldn’t resist running around my yard to capture botanical details and the beautiful bokeh (blurred background) that happens with an aperture of 1.8.  All photos in this post were …

seed starting tips

Published by

I’m beyond giddy.  This is my very favorite time of year. Between packets I had, packets I picked up, and a special care package from my dad, I have most of the seeds that I need (thought I still need to place a last minute order from Johnny’s). Last week, I started… Marketmore and Sweet Marketmore cucumbers California Wonder 300 and Orange Sun peppers Russian Tarragon Tomatoes: Mountain Magic Vine Hybrid, Ananas Noir (won from Down to Earth Digs), Best Boy, Supersweet 100 Cherry Hybrid, Amish Paste Heirloom, Crimson Cusion Beefsteak Heirloom, Burpee Big Boy, and Brandywine Red. Red Velvet Celosia Marigolds Nasturtium: Jewel Mix and Empress of India Gigante Verde Tomatillos I’m particularly excited about tomatillos.  I’ve never grown them before and I love them as a snack if they are fresh from a garden (not the ones in the grocery store – ew). We have a grow light shelf similar to this one, only deeper and with four shelves (and we bought ours on Craigslist a few years ago because the price is …

why I love Saturday mornings (in Instagram)

Published by

Every saturday, I wake up to a smiling little boy that I get to spend ALL day with.  Our tradition, weather permitting, is to go out and water and weed the garden together.  I tell him what all of the plants are (while pretending he understands me).  Just in the past week or two, he started to reach out to grab the flowers, which is completely adorable. This morning, I had my cell phone with me and decided to take some pictures of the garden via Instagram. I hope you enjoy seeing how our garden grows.

sweet little garden additions

Published by

We did really keep our planting relatively (I do stress relatively) simple this year, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t add anything at all.  We can’t live without a few annuals and…okay…a few perennials too. We put the flower boxes out on the front porch.  Last year, I planted petunias and other various annuals that kept withering up and weren’t all that pretty.  This year, we kept the boxes really simple with red begonias and vinca vine. Last fall, we dug up our dahlia bulbs and saw how they had multiplied.  We kept them in the coolest part of our basement over the winter.  I can’t wait for them to bloom.  They make the most beautiful bouquets.  I planted the largest bulb clumps in very large pots on our back deck. The smaller bulbs were planted in the front flower bed and in a pretty little blue pot in a now-empty spot where the spring daffodil bulbs have withered up. My parents had given us gorgeous antique urns that my father refinished as a …

getting the veggies in

Published by

I had no idea if we’d even get a veggie garden in this year.  I had no plan like I did last year. I never started the seeds I purchased. When there is a new baby in the house, any spare time is devoted to washing bottles, washing laundry, and just maybe catching a nap every now and again! One day, when Anderson was four weeks old, we went outside to weed a little and the temperature was just right for lettuce and beets. After that, it just seemed to be too chilly to take him out.  Things were really a mess. Loads of empty pots… Mounds of weeds where seedlings should be… Overgrown herbs, also buried in weeds… Tons of seeds just waiting and begging to be planted. Things were really in sad shape. So…I called in the troops: mom and dad. My mom watched Anderson.  You can tell it was such a HUGE favor. My dad and I set out to get the veggies in.  He worked the beds.  They were loaded with tree …

best and worst

Published by

My friend, Jo, has this great thing she does with her kids. When they eat dinner, they take turns going around the table and discussing the best and worst parts of their day. She calls it “best and worst.” I just saw her yesterday and I remembered this little activity. I think it is not only a great way to get families talking at dinner time, but good for us all to stop and think about what was best and worst about our day/week/month/year. I thought I’d start a periodic best and worst on this blog just for fun and to celebrate (and lament) with you. Below you will see the best and worst of this past week, in no particular order. BEST (whoohoo!) Family book time! Chris and I co-read The Lorax to Anderson. We are already training him to care about the brown barbaloots and the truffula trees. A very pretty lightening storm. Power gardening during Anderson’s naps. Anderson’s first BBQ. He was the life of the party and up late like a …

thank you, mother nature

Published by

Every spring, I prune and prod and weed and water.  I spray my roses to ward of thrips. I do my best to fight grubs and move plants around to fill areas out.  I spend a lot of time plucking new maple seedlings from the ground and fertilizing, fertilizing, and fertilizing with worm poop and Neptune’s Harvest (though eek – just realized Neptune’s Harvest is fish-derived, so I guess I may need to find a new one).  Very time consuming, but oh how I love looking at the fruits of my hard labor every year. This year, mother nature realized that I just had bigger priorities, so she helped me out. Everything simply exploded this year. I am not talking about vegetables or annuals, but rather my perennials.  Bit by bit, I’ve accumulated lovely plants.  Many came from my childhood home in Upstate New York.  Rather than leave their beloved perennials when moving, my parents potted them up and I drove back to Boston one April day with a small SUV LOADED with our family’s favorite …

I have found heaven: Rosaly’s Garden

Published by

It has been a completely psychotic few weeks.  If I were to be granted one wish, I think I’d wish for life to slow down just a wee bit. I’ve been trying to convince Chris that I could be a great stay-at-home kitty mom, but I don’t think he’s buying it.  It is the most intense time in garden land and I haven’t written in over a week! When I was little, I wanted to be an author. Though that dream still lingers somewhere in my subconscious, I have a new dream.  When I grow up, I want to own my own vegetable farm.  I can imagine picking fresh veggies and herbs on Saturday mornings and working my stand at a farmers market, selling beautiful organic tomatoes, celery root, string beans, and more.  I can also sell herbs (both potted and cut) and gorgeous summer bouquets.  Not the overly-flashy types of flowers you’d see in a flower store.  I mean the true summertime flowers like zinnias, dahlias, amaranthus, loosestrife, black-eyed susans, sunflowers (I could keep going…calendula, Queen …

the very first bouquet of 2011

Published by

There is nothing like picking your first bouquet of the season.  The spurts of color around our yard such as creeping phlox, myrtle, pansies, and primrose are admirable, but unpickable.  Yesterday, I finally got to grab my pruners and head outside to cut flowers: a purple tulip, grape hyacinths, and a few sprigs of broom. Even Stevie is captivated by the colors.

tough love with seedlings (and chaos management)

Published by

I, girl who loves to talk about compost and hike in the mountains, just spent nearly two days at work in an all-day seminar on product management.  The seminar was as interesting as a corporate meeting can be, but as the minutes ticked by I panicked about all of the things building up.  I could almost see giant pop-up email notifications in my peripheral vision. VP of foolishness: At one point during the day, I found myself mentally starting a to-do list, responding to an email request from one my colleagues on my Blackberry, tweeting out a review that had just gone live, and looking up the new address for my doctor’s office on my iPhone–all at the same time (and I’m not kidding).  I was simultaniously handling two phones, one social media site, email, a power point in front of me, and a guy using phrases like “perceived value” and “‘win/loss analysis.”   Self-evaluation When I realized what I was doing, I had to actually laugh at myself.  I’m so important that the office can’t function without me?  Hardly.  I caught myself before it could get any …