My Not So Secret Garden 2010

After a mid-May planting, here's my little garden. Kept it small and simple: green beans, cucumbers, cherry & grape tomatoes and basil. Anxious to see if the tomatoes turn red on the vine this year. We had to use the old brown bag method last year because they stayed green outside. Unloaded the entire composter in the soil before planting. Hoping the first harvest is right around the corner!

Bedroom Makeover

Finally! We have a headboard for our master bedroom. I'm so happy we didn't end up purchasing an entire set of furniture (we had some on layaway over a year ago but then canceled it). This is the shabby, chic, cottage feel I was going after - to me at least! A journey out west toward the Covered Bridge Festival last month helped me land an old, shabby $10 door that is now our headboard. Not knowing exactly how wide our king bed was, I was worried the door might be too short. Bye, bye silly worries. It fits perfect.

Before

After

Our room has been beyond neutral. Using the colors fr om our wedding (light green and navy) and inspired by our rock star wedding invites (thanks Amy & Ash), I found pillows at Marshall's for $30 that bring in the blue. The door is a a very pale, mint green-ish, matching the color scheme of the wedding invite almost to a T.

Wedding Invite

Door

Check out that hardware!

Pillows from Marshalls

Our favorite handyman came by and helped mount the door to the bed. Total cost of the headboard, $30.

Where we did splurge was on the wall lamps. Found these two hotties from Crate & Barrel, but the fun part was that we had a gift certificate from there, so that made the price much easier to handle, $115 after gift card. We're not sold on the lamp shades yet, hence the plastic is still on them. We're thinking maybe a smaller shade. Any suggestions are welcome.


We have two frames to hang on the adjacent wall still, $14 from Target.

Total Cost of Bedroom Makeover: around $200

Mystery Plant

Any idea what this vining wonder is in our garden? I think it grew out of seeds from our compost, similar to what Steph & Scott experienced last year directly in their compost pile.

The leaves are huge. To put it in perspective, even my size 10 feet pale (literally) in size next to it. I'm guessing some type of squash . . . we'll see!

Garden Progress - July

I don't want to jinx anything, but our garden is rocking this year. No harvest yet, but I think we're just around the corner from cucumbers and basil.


A couple lessons I've learned this year:

1) Cucumbers sprawl like crazy! I made the mistake of putting the chicken wire fence on the wrong sided of the cucumbers, and they overtook the row of lettuce. We have a handful of good looking cucumbers though, so hopefully they'll be equally as tasty.


2) Put in taller and stronger posts for snap peas. These poor guys had no more room to climb, so I had to tie some string from a tall stick to the tomato cage to give them something else to vine on. I hope they make it. They're a bit crowded, so I'll space them out better next year if they end up working.

A sunflower not quite ready to bloom. Reminded me of the XBox logo.

So excited that the sunflowers worked! These little guys can't help but make me smile. They're only about 3.5 feet tall and have a much smaller bloom than their full size cousins.

How Does My Garden Grow....Like Sow

Ahhhh Spring! We planted our garden on May 13. These pictures were taken on May 28th (happy birthday, Kelly!) With the help of our very own compost and a bag of organic garden soil, our tiny garden plot came to life.

This year we're trying:

Cherry tomatoes (1) -new!

Grape tomatoes (1) - the only tomato to turn red on the vine for us last year

Roma tomatoes (1) -new!

Cucumbers - new!

Snap Peas - had success with these last year

Green Beans - had success with these last year

Lettuce - new!

Basil - new!

Green Peppers - not very successful last year but keeping my fingers crossed

Jalapeno Peppers - new!

Sunflowers -new! I think these will be a long shot.

Cucumbers (above)

Snap Peas

Grape Tomato Plant

We condensed and moved our garden spot slightly. I love our trees, but they severely limit the sunlight in our backyard. We're taking the lessons learned over the last two summers and downsizing the space.

I placed newspaper over the bare soil spots and covered with grass clippings to deter weeds.

Happy to report everything has sprouted. The first week of April I started basil, cucumbers and sunflowers from seeds inside. They have made the transition to the great outdoors. All other plants were pre-potted.

Anyone else working their green thumbs this year? Potted gardens count too!

Photo Week: Checkered Flag Style

I love Stephanie's inspiration for the past week's photo challenge: The Indianapolis 500. I absolutely love the month of May in Indiana. The month kicks off with the Mini Marathon, a race where anyone can compete and the city comes alive with such enthusiasm. I'm not a huge racing fan, but I've come to love Indy Cars, the Speedway and everything that surrounds this month. I'll admit it. I tear up when I hear Jim Nabors sing on race day and during the fly over.

I didn't get the camera out this week, but I can't pass up posting for a Photo Challenge. Here are some of my favorite black and white puppy dogs. Tippy, the black lab/golden retriever mix, is a 6 month old service dog in training in the ICAN program. He is an amazing pup and is going to be a rock star service dog. Ruby wasn't really keen on him the first day or two, but by the end of week three, she hated to see him go just as much as we did. Hopefully he'll be back with us on another furlough in a couple months.

Also fitting are pictures from the Mutt Strut at the Speedway on April 26th.

Thanks, Steph for sharing the spirit of the race and all its fun!

Photo Challenge: Capturing Spring Results

Thanks to Steph for sharing her gorgeous spring in action pics!

Despite last night's freeze warning, the calendar confirms it's spring even if the temperatures do not!

These Virginia Bluebells in our front yard are so fun this time of year. Unfortunately, their lifespan is not long lived (or at least our past two springs here, they didn't last long). By June we'll have to pull them, but for now we enjoy them and their droopy glory!