{Garden Tales} Green Thumb?

One of my favorite things about spring is planting a garden. This year we made some drastic changes to our previous gardens. We moved it in the front yard (because we couldn't keep our dogs from eating the plants.) We made raised beds. And we planted more than we ever have before!

We began this project in March and finished planting the first week in April. It has been just over a month and I want to share the progress. I put the planting photo on the left and the recent photo on the right. (I actually took all these more recent pictures last week...it's amazing the difference a week can make because there is already more veggies coming in!) So the difference is really about 5 weeks (give or take a few days.)

Garden Bed 1

In this first garden bed, I planted from top to bottom: tomatoes, bell peppers, cabbage and sweet onions. Tomatoes and peppers are our favorite things to grow because we use them in everything. This bed is the least complicated and is one of the best growing. Everything is really coming along nicely.

Garden Bed 2

This bed has (from top to bottom): tomatoes, jalapenos, broccoli, flowers and basil. A couple of the broccoli plants died quickly so we replaced them with catnip on the left and chives on the right. Out of four small catnip plants only one survived, so I will probably put something else there soon. The chives, however, are doing quite well. I believe our flowers are getting too much late afternoon sun. It seems the ones in the front of the beds (which gets more afternoon sun) are withering and the ones in the back of the beds (which get more morning sun) are doing great. I am most excited by our basil in this bed because it is our most used herb. We are encouraging them to grow in bush-like form by harvesting from the top. I am very pleased to already be using most of our herbs!

Garden Bed 3

From top to bottom in this bed we have tomatoes, habanero, chili pepper, flowers, spinach, peppermint, cilantro, and flowers. We are having no luck at all with the spinach. With only the exception of a few spinach sprouts, we have replaced it. The spinach is one of the few plants we began from seeds, though it is the only one that failed in such epic fashion. It was replaced with dill on the left and sage on the right. So far, so good. The sage is especially taking off.

Garden Bed 4

This garden bed has (from top to bottom): cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, parsley, flowers, oregano and rosemary. The squash family is especially taking off. There are already several flowers budding of them, though it is hard to see in the picture for the leaves. The parsley is also doing great. We have used all the herbs so far.

Garden Bed 5

This final bed has (from top to bottom): bush green beans, flowers, iceberg lettuce, flowers, lavender and strawberries. The beans were from seeds and sprouted really quickly. They seem to be doing wonderfully. They are just now starting to flower, so hopefully we will begin to see little beans soon. The lettuce was also from seeds and it is doing okay. We have never had very good luck with lettuce, but we wanted to try it in our new garden. We'll see. All the plants are growing, but I don't know how much we will actually be able to harvest. I love having the lavender right by the door. I get a whiff of it every time I leave or enter the house and it is so calming and happy. And it is thriving! Last time I tried lavender it died almost immediately, but this time it is beautiful! The strawberries are wonderful. We have already eaten three off of it. Zoey was excited to eat the first one a couple weeks ago right before her baseball game.

Zoey still helps me water the garden all the time, but this picture was taken right after we planted.

I absolutely love our garden. I don't have a green thumb. I have been know to kill flower plants in days. However, it seems that when I can harvest food and herbs from it, I do okay at keeping it alive at least. It is a wonderful thing for Zoey and I to work on together during the week. We go outside and weed, adjust and water the plants at least two or three times a week. It is nice to get outside because of course when we are done we play, which is always a joy.

I am glad to share this love of gardening with Zoey at such a young age. My mom and dad shared a love of gardening with me ever since I was born. I loved being outside with them helping out and reaping the benefits with a plenty of fresh grown veggies. I am glad I can teach Zoey what my parents taught me and be excited with her as we learn about and experience nature.

photo credit

Happy Spring!

DIY: Painted Word Art

I created, what I think is, a really cool piece of art. I wrote about why I chose this arrangement and what it means to me in a post titled after the name of the painting..."I Don't Want To Be Just One Thing." The style and design can be as original as your imagination, but I wanted to go through the general steps of creating painted word art like this.

Step 1

Choose your paper or canvas and paint it how you want the letters to look like. I used acrylic paint for this project because it dries quickly and easily allows for distinct layers.

I wanted five different lines to all be different colors. To do this I measured it out and put down guide lines in pencil to divide the sections evenly. Then I used painters tape to mark off each section as I painted it so it would stay neat. If you are good with painting straight lines, you could do it free hand with the guidelines, but painters tape is fairly cheap and makes it easy.

You can see the painters tape on the bottom of the red section in the picture. I had already pulled the tape up on top of the red section, but it gives you an idea at least.

Step 2

The next step is to make letters for what you are spelling. I used a stencil and cut letters out of painters tape using both scissors and an X-ATO knife. It took some time, but it was very effective. You could also use stickers to do this. However, make sure the stickers are easy to lift off the paper and do not stick or tear the paint underneath. You will need all the letters in your painting so you can cover it with the top layer of paint.

Step 3

The first part of this step is to lay down all the letters that you made out of painters tape or stickers. Make sure they are arranged exactly how you want them. Then cover the entire painting with your top color. Again, you can design this however you like, simple or complicated, the sky is the limit. I wanted mine to be very bold and simple so I chose black as my top color so the colors underneath would stand out.

One tip, that I learned through this process, is to outline the letters either with a marker of the same color or with the paint. I had a little of the paint pass under the edges of the tape making the edges look fuzzy when I first took the stickers off. Possibly, this could be avoided just by being aware of it and being careful around the edges of the letters.

Step 4

Next you must carefully peel the letters off of the painting.

As I said before, my letters were a little fuzzy at first from extra paint along the edges of the letters. I went back and fine tuned it with a permanent marker around the letters to crisp the edges and make the letters pop off the page.

And voila! You have a really cool piece of art. Happy Painting!