What's Growing at Our House?

Even though I've got a crazy allergy/sinus drip that's causing me to talk like Marge Simpson's sister, I love that everything is in bloom!

It's been a month since we planted our raised garden.  So here's an update on how it's growing...and a few other things growing around our yard.

This will be a sweet cherry pepper

Mmmm.... squash.  There are lots of yellow squash flowers blooming!

And even some actual tiny squashlings (that's a word, right?)

A few blackberries...

And lots of blueberries

The banana peppers are going crazy!!!

And a tomato is starting to turning red. 

These hydrangeas keep coming back every year like rock stars.  You gotta love a beautiful flower that grows even when neglected!

Easter lilies. . . again, grossly neglected flowers. . . but they keep coming back.

And weren't these guys babies like, yesterday!?!

So that's what's growing around our house...well grass and weeds too (and the laundry pile), but who wants to see pictures of that?  For now we'll just stick to plants and babies munching on bacon.

Raised Vegetable Garden

Every year I dabble a bit in gardening.  Usually just a few tomato plants and maybe some peppers in box planters.  I can't really till up the ground because we have clay dirt, which doesn't really promote growth.  So I've been thinking about raised garden beds, which you can build out of wood or bricks or stones.  We happened to have an enitre pallet of bricks in our back yard.

*** I don't know why they are there, but they've been there for 7 years.  SEVEN.  And they've been the source of MANY arguments***

When John suggested we use the bricks to build the beds, I might have given him the look I always give him when he talks about that pallet of bricks....you know the look.  But, bless him, he just walked over and started arranging them.  After much - uhm - discussion as to size, placement and structure, we ended up with this guy:

Which we filled like so:

We planted squash, zuchini, tomatoes (TONS), eggplant, artichokes (curious to see how that turns out), pickling cucumbers (because why not learn to pickle this year??), and a few varieties of hot peppers.  They did not all fit in this bed (I could have, possibly, gone a bit overboard at the plant nursery).  So we put the rest in the planter boxes from last year.

Then we got really crazy and decided we needed blueberries and black berries.  So another bed is currently under construction.  We're thinking about adding in some raspberries as well.  I'll keep you posted on how it's growing!