My Little Backyard Garden

Okay, maybe this is a bad choice for a series of blog posts as things could go terribly awry and I'll be embarrassed I ever said anything, but just maybe it will turn out to be one of the best ideas when things actually grow.  I don't know, but I'm going to do it and we'll see together as I either succeed or fail with this whole garden thing.  I figure I'll document here along the way and maybe some good conversations will find their way into the world.  Or at least a few good laughs...

That said, let me preface this whole adventure with the following information:  I have always had a serious black thumb.  And when I say "serious" I mean as in all of my friends at Fairview Middle School laughing unashamedly when I won a houseplant in a staff meeting raffle many years ago.  My plant-death record is no secret.  I love plants, I do.  They have just never really liked me back.  Needless to say, I took pity on that poor raffle plant and sent it home with a friend rather than punishing it for my good fortune with a death sentence of its own.  Since then, however, I have tried my hand with several other plant endeavors over the years and have slowly gained more success with keeping things green rather than dead, but this garden in my backyard thing is a whole new adventure.  (Okay, so I tried the garden thing once before in Maryland and was fairly successful, but then Hurricane Irene came through and uprooted or rotted out everything we were growing so I don't really count that in the mix because our gardening adventure was cut short by natural disaster...)

So, anyway here is where the garden corner of our yard started...

These pictures were actually taken from outside our backyard fence before we moved in.  The woman who lived in our house before us had a HUGE backyard green area.  So huge that it actually encompassed her (now our) yard and a large area beyond the property line which is open land belonging to the electric company.  All of the greenery was quite impressive, but also a very pleasant invitation to the wildlife residing in the open canyon behind our house.  And when I say wildlife I don't just mean cute little bunnies and squirrels, but things like rattlesnakes and skunks and coyotes.  So, nice brother-in-law, sister and nephew that I have, a lot of this was removed after the previous residents vacated and before the kids and I ever arrived.

So, then that fully overgrown area looked like this...

And remained pretty much like that until a few weeks ago when we went to work to change our stark dirt yard into something a bit more fruitful and a bit more productive.  So, after a Friday evening of the kids helping me disassemble a very aged walkway by moving LOTS of bricks, and a Saturday family (including sister and brother-in-law) workday of cleaning up trash, removing rocks, pulling up roots, unburying cement blocks, digging out stumps, and burying small children that original overgrown corner looked like this...

Then, my brother-in-law worked his magic and over the next few days turned a big empty dirt corner into this...

                            ...and turned me lose to start a garden. Yeah!

My first efforts were aided by Jack as he became quite the "farmer"'.  After we raided the outdoor department of Lowe's one morning, he and Ellie were going to divvy up the work but when she wimped out Jack was happy to step in.  He helped me put our tiny corn, cantalope and tomato plants in the ground, plant our green bean and pea seeds, and put our blackberry bush in a nice large container.  He was a great help and really enjoyed it.  When we were done, we had this...

It's been about three weeks since Jack and I planted our first little green friends.  Since then the kids and I have added some lettuce, carrots, broccoli and lima bean seeds, as well as some small strawberry plants and a couple blueberry plants. 

Sophie has transferred the sunflower she planted at school over and it is growing well.  This first shot is from about four days ago and the bottom shot is from today.

 Becca's school planting seems to have drowned in a three day rain spell we had, but she recently started over with a new seed so hopefully she'll have some sunflowers too. She took it upon herself to plant a few out in Rattlesnake Valley too (that big piece of electric company land behind us) so she might just have seeds coming out her ears if the birds leave them alone.  =)

Today things look like this...

 Oh!  And we have a couple of mystery plants too.  Not sure where they came from.  Not sure what they are.  Apparently some seeds blew in from somewhere and are growing happily amidst the friends we invited, but I've told the kids to let them grow.  And it's kind of fun waiting to see what they will turn out to be.  (Hopefully it won't be some sort of Venus Fly Trap or something.  Yikes!)

So, here we are.  Gardeners.  Me and my little work crew of five.  Trying our hand at growing our own veggies, producing our own snacks, saving some money on produce, and hopefully reducing the ever-present urge to say, "Mom, I need a snack." 

Yes, I realize that half of what we grow may never make it out of the backyard before being consumed by small tummies with busy chompers, but I'm okay with that.  I'd rather they be eating homegrown beans and berries and tomatoes than most other things anyway.... so we'll see.  Wish us luck.  I'll keep you posted.