L'Jardin

I can finally say I am starting to feel like I love my home. Which is to say, I've certainly been proud of what we've been able to do with it, how we've improved it etc etc, but all this time, in the back of my mind, I've held out loving the house because I kept waiting for something, anything, to happen to make us have to move. It must be due to the cumulative years of temporary residences - since college I don't think I've lived in any one place for more than 3 years.

But I LOVE my house. And my garden.

When I put it together before the wedding, I didn't quite realize what an undertaking it was going to be. According to Lasagna Gardening, I should have only built a garden bed that was 4x4ft... yeah, I kinda neglected to read that part. The bed was easily 4x that. And, granted, I thought it looked pretty good for what it was - a hodgepodge collection of flowers, a lone lime tree and decorative grasses that had no rhyme or reason to them, using a gardening method that I'd never tried before. (There's a reason why the day before the wedding I was still frantically stuffing annuals into the ground in the hopes of filling out the gardenscape - it was a little bare looking for all the back breaking work that went into it.)

Now that the garden has had a chance to settle, the annuals are long dead and withered (and mulched), some plants, as it turns out, did really well; others, not so much. Those that survived the drought last summer and the colder than usual Austin winter are blooming like crazy. My little lime tree has exploded with new leafy growth goodness. The lavendar and sage are flowering like crazy. Even my stunted rosemary is showing signs of new growth. As for my mint, well, let's just say I guess I did not read the instructions very carefully, because lo and behold, that one lil' mint plant up and went rogue on me! It spawned about a dozen offshoots that are slowly taking over the garden. If not for the fact that we go through so much mint (mojitos, anyone?) during the summer, I might be upset, but as it is, I'm just glad I don't have to buy any more plants.

And happiness! Spring mulching consisted of 1/4 cu. yd of mulch, as opposed to the 4 cu yds it took to build the sucker. For all that we had no rain and hard freezes, most of the plants fared surprisingly well - to the point that at least, they're coming back like gangbusters.

So far this year we've added a pear tree to the mix (well, to the yard, it's on the opposite side of the garden, but whatever), as well as tomato plants, dill, thyme, oregano, leeks (which, erm, I don't think are supposed to last through summer, but we'll just see what happens, ok?). And shh! I even snuck in three peonies ... although I'll be shocked if they grow into anything. I'm pretty sure I planted them at the wrong time, and I'm not entirely convinced I didn't plant them upside down. Oh well. We'll see.

If I can scrape enough left over money, I'm going to see about getting some squash into the ground, and maybe, maybe a lemon and/or avocado tree. Be still my beating heart - homegrown avocado! I can't wait to have homemade salsa from my own tomatoes, limes and onions, homemade guac from my own avocado tree... on homemade tortillas..., oi, excuse me while I wipe the drool away.

Summer#1.0

I still need to add images of the garden from the wedding, which was a few weeks after the garden went in, as well as better photos of what the bed as it looks now.