How does your garden grow?

Last year with all of your yard construction we were silly and decided in about July that we wanted to try a garden. Needless to say, it didn't work so well. I think the only thing that didn't die were our strawberries and we actually got 2 or 3! So, this year we decided to give it another try and start planting earlier in the year! We used seeds and baby tomato, pepper, and cucumber plants. We did a couple different kinds of lettuce, tomatoes and peppers to see which worked best and which we liked better! It is going a lot better than we thought! It's almost pathetic how excited we get when we go out and see new things growing and things ripening! (It's so fun to see Nate get so excited over a garden!!)

This is what our garden looked like 3 weeks ago (6/9)




Rhubarb (Nate's idea! He can't wait to make pies with it!)



Cucumber



Peppers



Peas



Carrots



Strawberries



Lettuce




And this was our garden last night! I decided to go out and see if there were any fun things we would actually be able to eat! (We have had Chicken Cesar Salad twice already with lettuce fresh from our garden! It's so much fun!)



Peas



Carrots, Lettuce, Strawberries



Tomatoes



Cucumber



Lettuce



Rhubarb



Yummy things I found....... with much more to come soon!!



While I was playing in the garden, Braxton was hangin out, basking in the sun!



We've have learned many things from our garden this year!

• Cucumber needs a LOT of room
• Don't plant so many carrot seeds and keep them together - we have a ton in 2 different places
• Peas need a wall to climb up - their little vines need something to attach to and it should be each other
• Don't plant so many pea seeds next year either
• Watermelon is hard keep alive - I don't think we'll try it again next year
• Give the Strawberries a little more room making it a little easier to keep them from shooting into the plants next to them

What peach tree?

During the summer once we got our yard done we decided that we would try and leave CHloee outside for a couple of hours at a time until we could figure out if it was something she would get used to and eventually enjoy. Nate left her outside one morning when he left for work and came home for luch that day to let her back in lock her up. Because she had been really good in the back yard for a while now, Nate didn't take the time to look around and make sure because he was in a little bit of a hurry to get to his next bid. Our neighbors called us that night after we had been home for a little while to see if we wanted to get snow cones. Of course we did but
because we didn't want Chloee to be locked up again we decided we would let her stay outside. Much to our suprise, when we opened the door to let her outside Nate noticed a nice empty spot in our yard. Before I even noticed anything was wrong he said "Where's our tree?" Being really confused, I looked toward the direction he was and this is what I saw......






And the Culprit......

More yard work

I'm starting to catch on to the idea that you are never done with house or yard work! Luckily this time it wasn't ours! My parents were getting huge dead spots in their grass and after looking into it my dad found out that the previous owners of their home didn't lay the sprinklers like they should have. My dad ended up redoing part of their back yard and changed out all 57 sprinkler heads and a couple other things that I don't understand. Of course he decided to start that fun project on July 25, the day before we finished our own yard and of course Nate was over there all day helping him! They were able to get it all done in just over a week and just finished Monday!! We definitely owed it to my dad to have Nate help him with all the help he gave us on our yard but I was so glad when they were done!! It was just so much at once and I hope now that we are done with big stuff for a little bit.

I am pleased to Announce.....

WE HAVE A YARD!!!! After many many months and all kinds of weather (snow, rain, heat, wind) we finally finished our yard on July 26th!! I know, I know most of you are thinking to yourself "but Kristin you are really never done with yard work" and my response to that is, I will take planting flowers, weeding and straightening up the yard over all the work we have done up till now any day! There are still a couple things we need to finish up like adding a drip line to our bushes in the front and a couple little touch ups on the pond but those are "little things" that we can do here and there as we want to! We also need to plant some flowers but we are going to be waiting until next year to do that.

It felt like we had another full time job there for a little bit after about 4 weeks of 40 hour weeks in the yard alone! We couldn't have done it alone. Thank you so much to all of those who have helped us over the past 4 1/2 months and especially that last month or so! Thank your for helping with the cement, the deck, the sprinklers, and laying the sod! Thanks especially to my dad for all of his help with our darn sprinkler system and trenching in our amazing rocky soil!! We would not have been able to finish when we did without all of your help! Thanks also to our neighbors for your patience in our HUGE mess! Thanks Babe for all of your hard work! There were many nights he was out there working all by himself because I couldn't help him with what he was working on. I would do what I could to help but I usually just got in the way. Thank you for all of the time and effort you put into our yard to make it as nice as it is now!

We had some friends over for dinner last nigh and we were able to sit on our deck and relax and enjoy the sound of our pond for the first time! It was so nice...

I posted some pictures of our yard and hope you can enjoy them as much as we do! We're still working on getting the grass green and a couple other little things. Trying to get the grass green is a very long process especially when it's so hot!! Nate has done a great job at getting it to where it is now though!

THE BACK YARD




DECK


VEGGIE GARDEN (we planted a little late and didn't water like we should have at the beginning so it's not doing so great for the most part - our strawberries however are spreading pretty well! I can't wait to try for real next year!)


FOUNTAIN/POND


SHED


THE FRONT YARD

It's a good thing your cute and your lucky we love you~

Our yard has been a big muddy mess for the last couple of weeks which Chloee has just LOVED! We have also had to take part of our fence down for a little bit for part of the cement work, which Chloee also LOVES!! Her favorite thing to do is to run around in the mud and then excape!! She has getten very fast and very good at dodging us. I can just see her snickering inside as we run around like a bunch of crazies trying to catch our dog! Thank you so much to our Awesome neighbors the Gelters for being so good about keeping track of our dog. A lot of the time we haven't even realized Chloee has excapet before we hear a knock on the door and it's Aaron with Chloee! Thanks Aaron for helping us watch our dog. Thank you to Syndey also! He will see Chloee and start barking because he is jelous that he isn't out playing as well! That is how the Gelters always know she is out. I'm sure we have given them a couple laughs as they have watched us struggle with Chloee! Luckly that entertaining is almost finished, I hope!! We owe you guys big time!!! The best part is after she's done running around in the mud and she comes inside, more often than not before we can grab her to clean off her paws, she gets away and runs through the entire house!! Let's just say we have gone though a couple cans of carpet cleaning stuff and try and mop once a day and especially when we know people are coming over!

Our Dining Room









The outside of our door when she actually stays in our yard and scratches when she wants to come inside.



The bucket Nate decided to try and clean Chloee's feet off in everytime she came inside. It's a lot harder than it seemed and wasn't used very often!

The yard

Our Weekends the last couple of weeks have been crazy!! Nate has been working on our yard so much! And it is finally getting to a poitn that you can start to see the progress which we both love!. The couple weekends we had a little while ago with the Horrible weather really put us behind but luckly the the weather has finally started to work with us a little bit! But lately Nate's been workin even on the weekends that haven't been so great!!

We have been waiting for this day for weeks!! The day we finally pour the Cement! Now that we have that done we can work on other things and continue to make progress!!

Thank you so much to all of those who came out and helped us get it all poured! For all of your hard work and muscles! Those wheelbarrows looked pretty heavy! Chris, Aaron, Brad, Korbin, Kristian, Jason and dad - we can't thank you enough! It would have taken us all day with out your help! Thank you also to all of those who let us borrow wheelbarrows and even for those who bought some for us to use!

Thanks to Nate for all his hard work and all the time and thought he as put into planning the layout of our front and back yard! When he came to me with his ideas I was so impressed that he came up whem them all by himself. I can't wait to see his ideas in real life once we get it all finished! I'll admit he's the one doing most of the work right now but he said once he gets the cement laid I will be able to start helping. I'm actually kind of excited! Thanks also to all of our family, for their help the last couple of weeks, especially Nicholas, Korbin, Bryan, Jason and my dad! We couldn't be as far as we are without your help! They've been over for a couple hours after work on some weeknights and all day Saturdays!! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!

The before of our yard - we decided we were going to rip up our "sod"! I say "sod" because the people who put it down used hydroseed and didn't lay down any sort of top soil. They pretty much put it on straight rock. No wonder it didn't take very well!





Step 1: Diging up sprinklers (I actually helped with this part)





Step 2: Ripping up the "sod" and leveling the dirt - yes even in the snow! Nate rented a little bobcat thing the first weekend in April and of course we woke up to a blizzard Saturday morning.







Our neighbor even used our snowblower



Despite the yucky cold weather the guys had a blast!! It was more of a toy than a tool!





Later that day when all the snow melted I couldn't even imagine letting Chloee outside. We had a muddy mess!!!









Of course we had to eventually!!






I took her right up to the tub for a bath and the second I put her in the water went Brown!!

Step 3: Pouring gravel - This step seemed to take quite a while and was a lot of hard work! For some crazy reason I guess I forgot to take pictures of this step but I guess I made up for it with all the other pictures I got!

Step 4: Pouring Cement!!! - This was the best step of all (in my opinion) We can finally start to see progress!!











Step 5: Stamping the Cement - Nate decided that he wanted to stamp our cement in the back yard. Thanks to the help of my dad and Korbin it actually turned out really well considering it was their first job! It almost looks purple now but in 26 days when we can spray it off Nate said it's supposed to be more of a gray/black color.













Step 6: Keeping Chloee out of the powder - The hard part now will be trying to keep Chloee off of the stamping for 26 days! The powder you use to stamp stains everything it touches. We may end up with a purple lab but we'll do our best! After seeing the mess Nate made in it I can't even imagine what Chloee will do with it!