Baby Lettuce Lesson...

So recently we found these little guys, Gourmet Baby Lettuce growing in the oddest of places, between two railroad tie steps.  Is life not amazing?!  It's survives and strives & pushes through! I tend to baby my garden.  I fret and fuss about the soil and how much water is enough or too much.  This little lettuce had a lesson to teach me and Mother nature seemed to be saying, "look here's where baby lettuce wants to grow".  The steps here get very little direct light. So, this set us on a new course.

My goal is to someday have enough vegetables to feed us, year round.  I would love to can tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, salsa, pickles, all of it! To do that we'll need a bit more garden space I think. So I'm observing our yard anew to see where we can grow and how we can grow using what we already  have.

This led us to dig out a new, in ground garden bed.

I'm so excited about this bed.  It's on our side yard very near a large pine tree in our front yard.  It's easy access from the kitchen, yay!  Because it's so near the pine tree the soil seems to be perfect.  It was easy to dig out.  Michael and I finished it all including placing the rocks in under an hour. The soil is so rich and wonderful feeling, we didn't need to add a thing to it.  We already had the rocks that we've been pulling out of the back yard in order to make more room for flowers and veggies. This area of the yard gets mostly indirect light so I researched plants that might like that (besides our baby lettuce) and today we planted Everbearing Strawberries, Purple Bush Beans, Contender Bush Beans, Lemon Thyme, Chamomile, Greek Oregano, Onions, Italian Parsley, two Spinach varieties, Kale, some of that rougue Gourmet Baby Lettuce and red cabbage. 

In the Southwest the biggest garden hazards, that I've noticed at least, are the sun and Spring winds.  I'm learning that the rules of Sun/ Shade & where veggies like to be planted are very different here than in other parts of the country.  Now when I pick up a plant that says "plant in full sun" I chuckle a little bit.  Unless it's a cactus almost all plants like a little shade here.  I'm hoping these veggies will be happy.  Eventually I would love to see the strawberries take over. 

New in the garden this year are potatoes! I've never grown them before so I am super excited to see what happens.  We started them in the mostly shady side yard in a big pot and coffee sack. 

Last year, despite excellent soil, the plants in this bed did not do so well.  After observing it for awhile we notices that the sunlight is spotty.  Last year I tried planting nasturtiums, Sunflowers, cucumbers, zucchini and watermelon here, all sun loving plants.  This year I'm trying some of the colder weather root crops like onions, Carnival Blend Carrots and leeks.  We've planted spinach and lettuce here as well. 

One of our square foot garden beds is also planted with Spring veggies, beets, spinach, Red Sail lettuce, Kale & Red Cabbage. This bed is in full sun so it will be interesting to see how it does. 

Our tepee is planted with Peas at the moment.  Purple Triumph Pole Beans will be planted around the poles.  We're hoping for a play tepee by midsummer!

This bed at our front door is all about Spring flowers at the moment.  The boys were so thrilled to plant flower bulbs.  We're going to scatter seed here soon for Summer flowers and see what comes up. 

We've been working so hard at getting our garden beds ready and I'm tired but it hardly seems like work to me, I love it so much.  Are you beginning your garden planning? Any planting yet?

Until next time...

Desert Garden

I'm so excited about my garden this year!  The yard is much bigger than our last one, so we have some room to spread out.  We have 3 square foot gardens and hoping for one more, once we get a stubborn stump out.  In this front bed we have tomatoes, cucumbers, a watermelon, lavender sage & some jalapenos.  3 of the jalapenos are not doing well.  They seem to get the brunt of the high winds when they come.  The Lavender sage seems unhappy too. I think it needs more shade so I may have to move it. 

Here we have tomatoes, green peppers, 2 different basil varieties, marigolds and strawberries.  I'm fairly certain I'm crazy to be trying to grow strawberries in the desert but we shall see.

Corn in the back, rosemary, yellow squash, green peppers, parsley, oregano, strawberries and a tomato. 

This bed was all rock, and now we're growing zucchini, calabacita squash, watermelon, sunflowers, nasturtiums and some vine flowers to climb the sunflowers.  I planted cucumbers here too, but I'm not sure they came up. 

This is the 2nd year of our artichoke.  I guess the first year you're supposed to pluck off any artichokes that begin forming.  We didn't have any last year and then it looked like it died over the winter but it came back healthy and is giving us our first artichoke! Now, I have no idea what do with it.  I've never had a whole artichoke. So this will be a learning experience. 

Our wine barrel this year holds a tomato and 5 basil plants. One lemon basil growing very slowly. I'm loving breakfast burritos in the morning with scrambled eggs, a spinach tortilla, tons of fresh basil and a bit of sea salt.  Yum!  Can't wait to add some cherry tomatoes or zucchini to it as well!  I'm such an impatient gardener.  It's at this point of the garden that I think it's never going to grow, I only see it's progress in pictures. 

This is the other side of our backyard and has been devoted as the kid space.  The boys naturally gravitate to the little tree and are always "decorating" it with strings, ribbons and dangling toys.  That's Owen's shovel stuck in the flower bed there. He set it up very precisely and gets hopping mad when it falls over.  We took some of the rocks we pulled from the garden bed and made a little sand box out of the huge sandbox that IS the yard.  Not sure what we'll do about the sand, if anything. Grow food not lawns right? It would take some major work to grow grass in this yard. I'm not up for the challenge at this point, though the kids are missing the grass we had in the old yard.

Some lobelia, mums & peppermint in pots.

Last week my Mom was here visiting from NY and we cleared this outer bed of rocks and planted flowers.  I added mulch on top but the big pine tree adds it's own natural mulch of needles.  I'm collecting all the pine cones here too, Mom's idea, I think it's so pretty.   

(My Mom & Owen)

So how is your garden growing?

Until next time...

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Pssst... Don't forget to enter my giveaway at Wild Armadillos! It's only open for one more day.  Winner gets a Birthday doll!!!  And there's a coupon code too! See post for details.

Loving right now...

 

Nature: & little boys

 

 

Growing things: corn seedlings

 

 

Tomato  & basil

 

 

Beautifying the yard: slowly

 

 

Artwork: finally hung

 

 

Freshly cleaned studio: (except for the parts I give up on)

 

 

Spring things: in progress

 

 

New inspiration: Birthday ring dolls. 

 

Until next time...

 

 

Happy Earth Day!

I know, I know, I've been incommunicado lately.  You see I have Spring fever!  All I can think about is cleaning up our new yard & making it pretty.  At the moment it is far from pretty.  We're still working on that huge stump in the middle of the yard.  We cleared out some old xeriscape to make a garden bed.  We added city compost, (thank you Monica!) a little soil and planted.  Oh, the dreams contained in little seeds.  We planted sunflower, cucumber, zucchini, nasturtiums & a watermelon in that lovely open earthy space.  The next day we had the worst wind storm ever, so who knows if those seeds survived or where they flew too.  Such are the hopes & dreams of a gardener in the desert. We cleared out another patch of rocks to make a flower bed for Cannas , I really hope they take!  We also made up a new square foot garden bed and planted seeds and a few seedlings.  We hope to have lots of tomatoes, corn, beans, herbs, peppers, marigold, arugula, nasturtiums.  Again, we shall see.  My potted artichoke came back!  And the spincach seems to be happy. 

The boys and I have also been working on this year's fairy garden! (Or gnome garden as it's known here.)  Here's a post on last year's fairy garden. There's a glimpse of it above.  We're not yet finished so I'll save that for another day.

I managed to break through my Spring fever recently to make a few things for my neglected etsy shop.

 

I'm excited to tell you about my Tulip Baby Birthday favors!  I have a group of 12 of them in the shop.  If you need a different amount please ask.  I also made a birthday prince and a couple of princesses.  They can fit into most birthday rings. Then a couple of Spring butterflies were in order.  One that can be made into a necklace or ornament.  They have all been a welcome distraction from my constant garden planning!

Anyway, I'm here, alive, feverish!  Do you have Spring fever?  How is your garden growing?

By the way, Happy Earth Day!  It's a beautiful day here in the sunny Southwest.  To celebrate, enjoy 10% off at my MamaWestWind shop with coupon code, "EARTHDAY".  I'll leave that code active until next Monday, April the 29th, 2013.

Off to do more yard work! Until next time... 

Easter Morning...

 

 

We had a fun Easter morn, well after a while.  Michael woke up at about five in the morning trying to see if the Easter bunny had come yet.  Since it was still dark I told him to go back to bed!  By some miracle he actually did.  Then later he woke me up crying to say that the Easter bunny had forgotten him. You see the Easter bunny decided that since Michael is 8 he could look a little harder for his basket this year.  The Easter bunny put Owen's basket on his dining room chair and Michael's inside the dining room cabinet with the door ajar.  When Michael didn't find his he assumed the worst!  I told him we should make a thorough search before assuming such a thing.  All was well after he found it!

It's our tradition to have a foiled chocolate Easter egg hunt and so as soon as they woke up they started snitching them.  Especially Owen who was just beyond thrilled!  We laughed over the funny places the Easter bunny had chosen.  All day long they were spying eggs that they had not found earlier.

In addition to chocolate and a couple small toys they each found a special book beneath their basket, The Story of the Rabbit Children and The Story of King Lion both by Sibylle von Olfers.  Owen has gotten quite a kick out of all the interesting foods that the animals bring King Lion. They also found a fun new toy, the beautiful bunny play set featured above.  I've been eying Eve's Little Earthlings etsy shop for awhile now and was thrilled to win this set in a giveaway!  Her work does not disappoint,  this toy is made so beautifully. Little bunny is stuffed so solidly that it has a pleasing weight to it.  And her sewing is so artful and detailed right down to the leaves and moss that decorates the bag.  Both the boys were thrilled and added the two felt bunnies we made last year to make a family. 

For breakfast we had boiled eggs and ham of course, along with some yummy half wheat cinnamon rolls.  I have a large roll recipe and so I make dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls out of the same bread batter.  For our dinner rolls I thought it would be fun to make these bunny shaped rolls.  Well, pulling them out of the oven after baking I thought hmmm, what a transformation!  My cute bunny rolls had turned into little half Venus of Willendorfs.  She had "risen"! Wouldn't these be great rolls to make for a blessing way?!  My boys didn't notice but me and my husband thought it was pretty funny!  I'm thinking if I want to try bunny rolls next year I'll use a much softer dough.  Well, that was our Easter.  Did you celebrate Easter?  How was it?  

Until next time...