Thursday, August 8, 2013

Jungle Garden

Our garden is a jungle. The first picture is from the spring and now the garden is tall enough to conceal the view of most of the house. I was gone for two weeks at the beginning of the summer and the garden just exploded. Since I have no clue what is in the garden my plan has been to just let it grow. I figured I would cut what I didn't want down after the plant had bloomed or show itself to be a weed. Since I could barely tell a rose bush from a fern at the beginning of the year, I thought it was a good plan. The previous owner just planted and planted and planted... and so now everything is over grown and far too big. There are wild grapes and blackberry bushes all through the garden. The wild grapes are sour and I haven't heard anything good about them. The blackberries are completely invasive and are taking over everything, but we should have a bumper crop this year. So I'm going to learn how to make all sorts of things with blackberries. This last picture is from June, all the tall leafy plants bloomed with tiny pink bunches of flowers. Very pretty flower, but the rest of the plant is icky. I realize now I have not taken enough pictures of the garden throughout the summer. I have all sorts of day-lilies everywhere, but now without pictures I'm not sure where the different colored ones are.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

City Girls Don't Mow Lawns

I'm 30 years old and just mowed a lawn for the first time. I'm not sure if its pathetic or just amazing that I never even touched a lawn mower before. A couple weeks ago my husband showed me how, but today was the first time I did it all myself. I have decided I like mowing our lawn. It's a horrible lawn only partly grass and a lot of weeds. But it gave me great pleasure to work on the lawn all by myself. I suppose it helped that my 2 year-old couldn't come up and bother me--a complete 45 minutes with no interruptions by my child! wow! I told Jake that I would be happy to mow the lawn all the time as long as he looks after the toddler the whole time. I think we have a deal.

City Girl

I'm a city girl. I'm not talking city as in a couple hundred thousand people, I'm talking about a BIG city--over 10 million people. I am a city girl. My husband is an Alaskan. He grew up in a community of 100 people on an island where the city had about 800 people in it. How we met and got married is a different story--but it never ceases to amaze me how two people with such different backgrounds ended up together. For most of our married life (almost 8 years) we lived in a BIG city. He adjusted to the way I grew up. Now it is a time for a change. This city girl is living in the country. A couple months ago we bought a dilapidated house and two acres in the relative "county". We can't really see our neighbors from our house, but if you walk to the end of the driveway you can. We live on a dead end road with woods and fields all around us. But are only 20 minutes from several downtown areas. I miss being able to just talk a walk to a coffee shop; but I have to say I love the peaceful atmosphere of my yard--the birds, crickets, frogs, and bumblebees.