Novice Gardening: the first year

I spent half of my childhood in the [somewhat] country, where my parents still live, raise chickens, and have an enormous garden.

(this wedding photo was taken on the road where my parents' house is)

(Yes, that was just an excuse to show a wedding photo)

For years my dad has maintained a huge prosperous garden that fed our family and many other people.

When I realized we'd have a little plot in our backyard for a garden, I was pretty excited. I thought I'd be a chip off the old block.

I checked out a stack of library books on english, herb and vegetable gardens and imagined a backyard oasis that was lush and fruitful. (I was also inspired by Anita and The Pioneer Woman)

Well, things never worked out quite how I imagined them.

Last spring after clearing and hoeing the area, I decided to just start by planting half of the area with vegetables and sprinkle wildflower seed over the other half. I tilled, mixed in garden soil for the nutrients and planted.

one month later:

Then I watered, worked, and waited. And started to realize how very little I knew about gardening.

My plants were taking forever to grow, producing little, and generally looking sad and pitiful, and bug-bitten, but I could never find the bugs!

(Well, everything except for the zucchini--that went crazy.)

After a meager harvest, in the heat of late summer they were scorched and most died.

I got discouraged and started going to the farmer's markets on the weekend. It was so much less time & work, and I could get food that was organic, locally grown and not too expensive. But I was feeling bad about my failure, so I didn't rule out another go.

Gardening is so time consuming! Do you have a garden? is it worth it?

Signs of Spring

It's spring in SoCal (the cloudy, rainy days verify this)

Out here February showers bring March flowers, and I've been enjoying every minute of them.

so thankful to our previous house owners who planted all these gorgeous calla lillies in the back, and side yard of our little house.

10 tulips for $6 + 5 free callas = happy latte

Hope spring is making its presence known wherever you are!

DIY Gift Guide: Teacup Succulents

I love succulents and living in Southern California means that they thrive here. But putting them in a teacup? Genius!
Check out the tutorial on Epheriell Designs

This is a great gift idea for friends or a hostess gift for a party.

(I especially love the delft, because of my dutch heritage)

How sweet does this little teacup succulent garden look in a windowsill?

Hope this inspires you to create a DIY Christmas gift of your own!

Departure of the Deciduous

This weekend we had to say goodbye to one of my favorite things about the house we're renting:

Our giant backyard tree.

Our landlord had arranged to have someone trim it over the weekend and when he stopped by after the trimming he realized that 1. the trimmers had butchered the tree (chopped off the top and left the low hanging side branches that were supposed to be removed) and 2. the tree's trunk disease had gotten bad enough that its large branches would like fall and could do some real damage.

So he called us while we were both out on Saturday and let us know it had to go.

The best shot of it is from a photo I took of my outfit a few weeks ago.

I didn't realize how few pictures we have of our backyard until I started looking for them!

Here is another one taken the evening we invited our church's youth group over for a bonfire last September.

The tree covered about 2/3 of our backyard (on the west side of the house) and provided total afternoon shade. We rarely turned on our air conditioner because our house was so well-protected from the sun.

I've been looking online to see if I could figure out what kind of a tree it was and it might be some species of oak.

Our landlord was apologetic, but there wasn't much we could do about it.

I pouted and watched out the window while they cut it down, branch by branch

And then, it was over.

Our kitchen is three times as bright, but I think i would give up my sunlight to have that tree back.

(p.s. tree trimmers-why did you put that empty pot on the stump?)

I'm trying to look on the bright side (much more sunlight in our house, and a chance for grass to grow again) but this morning it looked no less sad and lonely.

I'm not sure anything's going to be done about the stump for a while--does anyone have suggestions about how I could make it a little less ugly? (a pot with a hanging plant?)