I feel like I've been neglecting my blog for awhile, but sometimes life just takes over. The past 4 weekends have been very busy for me, with family events, Easter, a baby shower in St. Louis, and Mother's Day. On the bright side, our calendar is opening up quite a bit over the next few weekends so we can start enjoying this beautiful weather!
A good friend of mine from college is having a little girl in July. She is an extremely sweet lady and will be one amazing mom, I have no doubt! Oddly enough, even though we went to college together, it was after college that we became good friends. I am so blessed to have been surrounded by so many wonderful ladies in my Undergraduate degree program, and even more blessed that we continue to keep in touch today. Of course when she announced she was pregnant, me and a friend offered to throw her an amazing shower. However, we were too late and another friend had already snagged the hostess role. I still made sure to have the date on my calendar months in advance so I wouldn't miss it, and a few weeks ago made the 4-hour drive to St. Louis to see the lovely mommy-to-be. I bought a bunch of her miscellaneous items and put together a gift basket, which I must say turned out adorable in my opinion. I'm always really excited when a crafty idea in my head actually turns out as good or better than I imagined it (this is usually not the case). Here's a snapshot I was able to get before she opened it.
This past weekend Chase and I spent much of Saturday doing yard work. Last year I planted a garden, which really means I threw random seeds in the ground around mid-June after all my starter plants had died inside, in hopes that something would grow. And it did! We had one extremely large stalk of basil (does basil grow in stalks?), 2 HUGE zucchini plants (which really only rendered about 6 or 7 zucchini since we didn't know we needed to help pollinate the flowers ourselves), a cucumber plant (which rendered exactly 1 cucumber), and a TON of cilantro. It turns out that we don't really like cilantro that much and saw no reason to grow it this year.
This year I had big plans! I mean, it's been on my to-do list for about 4 months now to plan my garden. I have the Square Foot Gardening book and have skimmed through it; I was completely ready to create the ultimate SFG. Sadly, time got away and I felt overwhelmed trying to start my garden without some help, so we're winging it again this year! We figured our soil is decent since everything grew so well last year, so we bought some compost to mix in, as well as throwing in what was left of some potting soil we had from another project, and mixed it all in. This year I tried to methodically space my seeds appropriate distances, and we even bought a hose so the garden will actually get watered! (My garden from last year is sounding more impressive now that you know we didn't even have a hose, isn't it?) We did buy 2starter plants, a tomato plant and a bell pepper plant. They look impressive right now, but I figure it's only a matter of time before they are sad and pathetic. Oh, we also planted zucchini, cucumber, arugula, and basil. We figured we would stick with the staples for this year, but next year, I'll have a lush SFG, I promise!
