Sister Love

I love sending my kids off to school everyday, but I also love seeing the ones at home play together and bond. Audrey and Emma play so well together, even though Emma is still so little.

Welcome to My Garden

I have been loving seeing everything in my yard come to life over the last few weeks. It's hard to believe that not that long ago everything was buried under several feet of snow.

The clematis(es?) (clematii?), whatever the plural word for clematis is, are covered in hundreds of blooms.
Who doesn't love peonies? I have never seen any this brightly-colored.


Several years ago, I bought three strawberry plants from the farmers' market. The first year, I dutifully plucked off all of the blooms, knowing that I would have stronger, more prolific plants the next year. So, the next year, I had a lot more strawberry plants that had a lot of blooms but I got no strawberries. The same thing happened the following year. I figured something must be eating them, rabbits, maybe? We had a lot of rabbits in our old neighborhood. The following year I surrendered and pulled out all of the strawberry plants except for one, which I put in a pot on the deck. I finally got strawberries from it. This is the second or third year of that plant being in that pot and it looks like I'll be getting more than a handful of strawberries this year.


Here is my Square Foot Garden (looking down from the deck). I did it just like the book says. I filled it with Mel's Mix (1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite) and put a grid on it ("It's not an authentic SFG without a permanent, prominent grid."). I even planted the tomatoes sideways, just like Mel says to do and they are flourishing! So far I have 42 onions, 1 broccoli, 32 carrots, 10 green beans, 1 eggplant, 2 bell peppers, 3 tomatoes, basil, chives, green onions, and lots and lots of lettuce. And I still have 5 squares to fill. Not bad for only 30 square feet.