This year, my husband spoiled me.
No, I didn't get a hand stamped necklace that I've been eyeing for the past couple years (didn't hint about it this year, as I want to wait for our family to be "complete" in October so I can have something with meaning for both of our children)
No, I didn't get a bouquet of gorgeous flowers that I will end up killing within two days because flowers hate me.
I got dirt.
One thousand, five hundred, sixty eight pounds worth of it.
Yup, you read that right. My husband spoiled me and got over 1500 pounds of dirt.
Jason, a sometimes-handy-man (okay, most of the time - and if he doesn't know how to do it, he will google it and figure out how to sort-of do it..) built me a raised garden bed a few weeks ago. This weekend, after a few weeks of bugging him about it, the dirt went on sale at Home Depot and so my husband made five trips and brought home 56 bags of dirt, hauled them into the backyard and emptied them into the garden bed.
Within a couple hours I was already out there playing in the dirt, with Dean alongside, of course.
I'm so excited for all the awesome vegetables I can grow this summer! I've never gardened before so I have no idea what I am doing... But hey, I've grown 1.5 children, so how hard can it be?!
I have a seasoned friend who is helping me and is my go-to for all my questions and random thoughts. (I know, poor woman, right?) but one of the best things about this day in age is that I can go on Google or Pinterest and figure out what to plant, when, how much maintenance is needed, how damp they like their soil and even what not to plant beside each other. Who needs the "Gardening For Dummies" book?!
Dean has enjoyed helping me. He loves playing in the dirt and is (finally!) starting to get the concept of staying out of the garden and not digging up plants. He's stomped on my strawberry plants a few times but now just likes to water them (and occasionally stand in the garden, between the plants, and jump) Today he was helping me put onion bulbs into the holes that I poked into the dirt and then covering them back up. Unfortunately, he then decided to dig them all up and put the bulbs back into the bag we took them out from...
We have tomatoes, peas, cucumber and pepper plants in the garden. We put green and white onion bulbs in today. We have cilantro, parsley, basil and dill seedlings that need to be moved into the garden soon. We have a watermelon and two pumpkin seed "cartridges" (you stick them in the dirt and they grow from there) that haven't yet shown any signs of sprouting just yet. We have strawberry plants that have their first (green) strawberry! And we have carrots, radishes, lettuce, zucchini and spaghetti squash seeds to plant soon too!
Now to wait the three months before we can even eat anything from the garden - If I can protect it from the crows, neighbourhood cats, our dog, the child-thing and my terrible luck with plants until then!
Do you have a green-thumb? What's your favourite things to grow in a garden?