Loving Our Garden

Last Friday night, we ventured out to Lowe's Hardware and purchased more for our garden.  We picked up some okra, more herbs, petunias for Maddie, soil, and compost.  We planned on using most of Saturday for planting and such.  

Saturday, we woke up and went to the Farmer's Market in Downtown Durham.  One can not help but be inspired when visiting this place.  We picked up some fresh kale, collard greens, strawberries and cilantro.  

That afternoon, we worked on getting rocks and weeds out of the garden.  We also pampered our plants by topping the soil right around them with compost.  We planted our kale that we grew from seed, as well as things we had bought the previous night.  After working hard and getting a vision of what our garden could become, we decided we wanted it to be bigger.  Scott got out the tiller and he expanded our growing area.  He also tilled up a spot just under the deck.  Which leads me to tell you that Kalen, Brayden and I made another trip out to Lowe's to get seeds to grow bush beans, snow peas, cucumbers,  & zucchini.  We also picked up a red pepper plant, another okra plant, and two more tomato plants.  Can you tell I was excited?

It ended up being a really hot day, like 84 degrees, here in Durham.  I was loving the warmth.  The kids were so helpful and understanding.  Kalen and Madelyn were especially good with the watering and planting.  Julian was most helpful with getting rocks out of the garden and watering.

Do you know how we water our garden?  Remember after Christmas I told you all Scott used some of his Christmas money to get a rain barrel.  I have posted some pictures of our barrel.  These are mostly for our good friend, Daniel, who had asked us about what ours looked like.  We love using the water to water our garden, outside plants & flowers and to wash our vehicles with.  The rain drains off our roof into our gutter that leads right to our rain barrel.  Currently, it is overflowing.  It most be monsoon season around here.  We have had a ton of rain yesterday and today.  

Mads and K plant an okra plant.  Kalen has compost that he is surrounding the plant with.  

Here's Maddie planting our Parsley, Basil & Dill.

This is our compost area.  To the left is the leftovers from the past few months, weeks, and days.  The square on the right is our old compost that has actually started a garden all on its own.  We had thrown some potatoes and pumpkin seeds in the compost at one time or another and now they are growing into plants.  

Here you can see where we have expanded our garden. 

These are photos of our rain barrel.

Our precious and delicious first harvest.