Our Home Sometimes Sweet Home: Garden. Take 3.

As I may have mentioned (I think), Matt and I purchased our first "real" home back in December. I say "real" because we also own a condo that we've decided doesn't count because it was...lame. So now, we have a yard! And, in celebration of said yard, I decided it would be an awesome idea to start a garden. Not only would we save a few bucks on groceries every month, but we would also have less food crammed in our fridge going bad since the boys only eat veggies if I hide them in the food. Also, gardens are fantastic to have for the zombie apocalypse. You have to have a certain level of self sufficiency in order to survive.

Back to the garden. Our backyard was a mess. A HUGE mess. It looked as if no one had even been in it in years. There were probably a good 7-8 different types of large bushes/trees, not to mention an about 2 foot thick layer of decaying leaves. I really wish we had taken more "before" photos because the afters would look SO much more impressive. There were two sets of raised flower beds: A large one that ran along the back fence, and 2 smaller ones that ran along the sides of the yard and across the front of the large bed. That seemed a bit redundant to me so, we cut them down a bit and use part of the back bed for the garden.
This is what we had to work with.


Imagine the mess to the right of the screen only covering the entire back and side of the yard.

The most logical plan of action was to just rip everything out. So, that's what we did. Or I guess I should say that's what I did because, contrary to popular belief, the men were terrible at all things yard related. It took pretty much forever but eventually we I cleared all but 3 trees and removed the small flower bed than ran across the front of the larger one (you can kind of see it, the wavy brick line, to the right of the picture). In Because we have two large dogs it was decided that low maintenance was the way to go so, instead of flowers in the flower beds, we put mulch. Lots and lots of mulch. FINALLY, it was time to deal with the whole garden thing. I called dibs on my corner and laid down some legit Lowe's soil. First to go in were our fruit trees; a lemon and an orange. Then we played the waiting game. Matt purchased one of those garden starter kits that you plant and sprout inside. We thought it was a fantastic idea!

It really wasn't. The seeds actually did really well. Within in couple weeks we had some pretty impressive little plants. So impressive, in fact, that our cat Whitey decided he need to make sure they were safe for ~~human~~ kitty consumption. He ate the tops off of pretty much everything. They were now sad, sad little plants. But, we persevered! We took those sad, sad little plants and transferred them to my new fenced little garden and, surprisingly, a lot of them actually continued to grow. I was pretty thrilled, mainly because I generally kill everything, always. I inherited my mom's black thumb. Funny side story: My mom killed a fake plastic tree.


It wasn't much but it was something and I was proud of myself! =p

It was a happy little garden until, one fateful and stormy night.... This happened...

Really? REALLY!?! Stupid tree.

At this point, I had given up. I mean, it's pretty obvious that I am not supposed to have a garden. If this means I have to raise cattle and chickens in my backyard in order to survive the zombies then so be it! I mean, technically there is some sort of rule in our neighborhood that forbids having barnyard animals in your back yard, but I figure that once they all turn to zombies the enforcers of said rules probably won't care as much. I mean, you would assume that, being undead and all, zombie would be a bit more lenient in regards to the rules of local home owner's associations.

Sorry, sidetracked again. Anyways, I thought I had given up gardening. I mean, obviously the fruit and vegetable gods were opposed to my success so why bother trying again? Well, after my near death experience with kidney stones this weekend I came to the decision that I needed to be productive, so I tried again. I attempted to fix what remained of my smashed little white fence and transplanted my lemon tree to the other side of the plot. Then, I went all in. I used all of the seeds we had left and, being the creative genius that I am, made little markers out of a few of the million of rocks we have lying around the property. So, with any luck, in a few short weeks we will start to see the growth of some pretty little (eventually edible) plants! I will let you know if it's possible to turn a black thumb green. I know you will be impatiently awaiting an update!