Day 19: Our Garden

Today I'm thankful for our garden. We are still learning the ropes of gardening but I think we're improving with each year. Last year was our first time trying to grow some of our own food. We ended up with more squash and beans than I knew what to do with.

This year, I did much better at meal planning, but we still had a few veggies go to waste because we just couldn't eat everything or give it away soon enough. I made several jars of tomatoes, but still ended up with extras.  My goal for next year is to do some more planning and freeze or can (and give away) our produce so that we don't have any waste.

I really enjoy being able to grow our own food and hope that our skills continue to improve.  It is a very satisfying feeling to sit down to a meal with a plate full of food that you helped to produce right in your own backyard. Someday, maybe our whole meal will all be from our backyard! :)

Garden update

Finally!

Our garden has been pumping out produce left and right.  I don't know if it's beginner's luck or if we just started off with really low expectations (probably both), but I am so, so proud of our little green thumbs!  Here's a quick recap:

This is our garden newly planted:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 6:

Week 9 (earlier today):

Sorry for the poor quality in some of those photos, but holy cow!  I think there's magic in our dirt - it's like Jack and the Beanstalk out here!  Look at these massive pumpkin vines.

Hubby had to trim them down because they were taking over the whole garden - they almost killed off all our lettuce.

Our cucumbers and squash are even bigger than the grocery stores'.

Green beans galore.

Tomatoes!

Little baby watermelon.

Sad little peppers that don't want to bear fruit.

I hope this post doesn't come across as bragging, I just can't get over how much we actually grew our first time.  I honestly thought we'd get just a few embarrassing sized veggies and that would be it.  I had no idea that you could actually get this much food from a small suburban garden.

There's such a feeling of accomplishment when we sit down to dinner and see food on our plates that we've worked hard to grow and prepare and cook ourselves.  Hopefully this is an encouragement to others that you don't have to know much about gardening or have a lot of experience before you start.  A little bit of research and some sweat and dirt and diligence can actually result in some homegrown veggies on your table!

Tell me about your gardening experience this summer.

What are your favorite plants to grow?

My Current Dreams

I just wrote last night about wanting to be better at sharing the real me and the dreams I'm chasing.  So here it is: the real, vulnerable truth about my current dreams and adventures:

-Blog:  So the moment I published that post - ya know, the one about not worrying if things weren't perfect?  Yea, the moment I published it I realized that something is wonky with my blog design and I haven't figured out what it is yet.  I apologize for all the random minus signs - it's not supposed to look like that.  :(  Somehow none of the images from my template exist anymore or something.  Anybody have any ideas??

-Learning Spanish:  I mentioned a while back that one of my dreams is for Doad and I to learn Spanish.   I loved it in high school and have wanted to become fluent since taking classes in school.  We are still plugging away on our CD's and I have even gotten a friend at work to help me out too.  It's going a little slower than I hoped, but I'm just happy that we are still working on it.  This is one dream that I think I can actually see progress in! 

-Home owning and decorating:  Since we bought our first house I have developed a love/hate relationship with Pinterest.  I can't get enough of their adorable ideas and clever tips for decorating and house keeping.  But I also feel a lot of pressure to have an equally adorable and clever house.  I've hardly posted a thing about our house because I'm waiting for it to all come together perfectly.  The truth is, I really love it how it looks right now, I'm just afraid it won't be Pinterest-worthy enough to post online. 

-Gardening:  I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing here, but things seem to keep growing so I'm cool with that.  :)  I don't think our tomatoes are gonna make it, and we forgot to plant the zucchini, but the pumpkins and beans practically grow while you're looking at them!  I've been taking pictures of the garden for another update post - coming soon! :)

-Sew So Lovely:  Remember when I opened my Etsy shop last year?  Well, I had pretty horrible timing with it.  I opened right before the holidays and spent so much time sewing Christmas presents for everyone, that I had no time to sew items for the shop.  Then we bought a house and moved the second week in January.  I've just never caught up and/or gotten back in the groove so my shop currently has 6 items in inventory and absolutely 0 online sales.  Womp, womp... 

I haven't given up on it.  I'm actually still sewing regularly, just nothing new for the shop yet.  Hopefully that will change soon.  I have lots of ideas!!

So there you have it.  Some of my current successes and failures.  All dreams I'm still working on achieving in some shape or form.  Your turn!

What are you currently succeeding at?

What dream do you want to start chasing?  What's something that's holding you back?

Garden Beginnings

Doad and I have embarked on our latest and greatest adventure: the world of gardening.

My is it intimidating.

I really just thought you stuck seeds in dirt, waited for the rain, and then picked your veggies at the end of the summer....

Ok, so that might be a slight exaggeration, but I was surprised by all the preparation and different methods there were to gardening.  I am a researching nerd so of course I looked at twelve million different websites and pinterest boards and gardening blogs before getting started with my own.  And then I had a panic attack.  

JK!  But I was a little stressed out - mainly because I then felt like I knew even less about gardening than I realized.  But then I stumbled upon this little gem of a website: www.smartgardener.com.  It helped a bunch!  Basically, it does all the planning for you.  You enter in the dimension of your garden, pick what type of plants you want to grow (they recommend them for you based on where you live and what season you're in), and when you want to grow them and voila!  They plot the garden for you, tell you how many of each kind to plant based on the number of people in your household, they even give you a weekly to-do list!  Cha-ching!  Gardening made easy again. :)

This is our garden after we first planted it.  We planned to do everything from seeds except for the peppers, but a neighbor gave us some cucumber and cherry tomato starts so we used those too.  I started getting really skeptical after we planted - I mean, how weird is it that you put a tiny, dead seed in the ground and it turns into a huge plant?  I wasn't holding my breath.  

But we watered and weeded faithfully (all according to our smartgarden.com checklist, of course!) and here is our garden just a week and a half later!

The seeds are sprouting!  Yay!!!!  

Check out these cute little peppers!  I'm so proud! :)

The weeds are also taking off like crazy ;P  We decided to only use part of our garden and got lazy with keeping the unused part weeded.  I'm hoping to tackle that soon just to keep the area looking nice. It will not be happening this weekend, however, as we are off to Canada for a weekend on the lake with hubby's family.  Hellooooo Summer vaca! :)

What are your latest adventures?  

Do you garden?  Please, pass on your wisdom!  :)