Our Gardens

Hi blog. Let's just pretend I didn't abandon you for several months.

Our first full fledged gardening attempt was a success this year. We planted potatoes, flowers, herbs, snap peas, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers. We hardly had to do anything thanks to so much rain. My dad helped us put in a rain barrel (and gutters). I only had to water the garden beds twice by faucet in a four month span (!!). I was so happy.

We got a lot of produce out of our three beds for a few months, but everything started to shrivel up by the beginning of August. We had a lot of rain sometime during the month though and we're back with at least a few things growing again. Sweet potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, leeks, and plenty of herbs. My favorite thing growing might actually be the lemongrass. My mother-in-law gave me a piece of lemongrass that rooted, we planted it, and this thing has thrived! It's huge! I'm so stoked to walk outside and get fresh herbs and in particular ones that aren't always available (and are pricy).

We planted dahlia bulbs in February, not really knowing how well they'd grow in Austin, but for months we had tons of flowers. They're so beautiful. Being able to cut fresh flowers from your backyard is on my top ten list of things that make me happiest. At one point the bushes were producing so many flowers that I started making bouquets for friends.

Here are eggplants growing in our garden right now. This is my first time ever growing eggplant. I remember my mom growing it when I was little and I was so weirded out by the name. I hated eggs back then, so clearly eggplant was very sketchy.

 More soon!

Flowers

Flowers in grandma's garden. Forgot the name (mom, help?).

I'm missing all the flowers up in Pennsylvania (and the much, much cooler weather). It's really hot in Austin right now, and despite some green plants in our back yard, our grass is very fried and not very pretty to look at.

Queen Anne's Lace growing in the wild. Did you notice the ant? I didn't until I went to add this caption!

I'm so obsessed with Queen Anne's Lace. And it grows wild EVERYWHERE up in PA. I had to resist the urge to pick some every time I saw it. My dad made a pit stop at a Home Depot one day and instead of going in with him, I convinced my mom to go to the side of the parking lot and help me pick a bunch of it (thanks mom!).

They also remind me of my wedding flowers (below) which makes me very, very happy :)

^My wedding flowers with Queen Anne's Lace (among other gorgeous picks by my Aunt Robin)

Flower outside of grandma's house. Forgot this one's name too (mom, help?).

I haven't made much since I've been back in Austin. I'm feeling a whole lot better, but the last stages of early lyme is fatigue. On Friday night I was so extremely exhausted/tired I went to bed at 6pm. Yep. You can see why I'm not sewing or baking anything right now. I'm happy to be doing a lot better though.

Echinacea in grandma's garden.

flowers in the hood

I know everyone's sinuses are paying the price, but I can't get enough of the flowers in bloom right now. There's a house pretty close to us that has their whole front yard full of wildflowers; I've been going on a walk in front of their house almost every day to see them.

farm flowers

Meg and I volunteered yesterday morning again at Green Gate Farm. We began the day pulling out weeds out of one of their gardens and then got upgraded to dead-heading flowers . We were gathering flowers to sell in bouquets at the farm stand, dead-heading older flowers, and getting to cut some to keep that weren't quite good enough to make it into bouquets.

I took these home:



Aren't they beautiful? I love having fresh flowers at home.