A little info about us

I moved in with Mike my boyfriend into his grandfathers house one year and three months ago. Along with the house came years and years of stuff mostly stuff that was of no use to us and a very overgrown yard that had been neglected for a number of years lots of things needed to be replaced, redone, cleaned and/or  thrown out.We had a cat and two dogs and then a couple of days later a stray cat joined us just out of the blue. Fast forward a couple of months and we saw a poor little dog dodging traffic on a busy street I convinced Mike we could not let this happen poor little thing we went back to see if it was still there, it was and it did not run away when I tried to pick it up (so we took it home). Now here we were two cats three dogs that dog we picked up we put up flyers for her to see if anyone would claim her after all she was adorable, alas  no one claimed her (sad) the dog was pudgy suspiciously round we figured she was just a piggy thing as it turns out about 4 weeks after we had her she went into labor. Dawg gave us five adorable little puppies, so here was the count ... 5+3+2= 10 animals plus one bird something had to be done ... we have since found homes for the puppies we kept one our little Rosie pie and her mother Dawg the name just stuck. Around the same time that we were finding homes for our little ones and the bird a cat gave birth somewhere around here and had four kittens, they were adorable little balls of fluff but very wild, after a while they went away except for one who has adopted us (darnit) never could say no to a pretty face.This is our family Mike, me, Dawg, Baby, Lyka, Rosie pie, Keekers (Kiki), Garfield and B.K.       

 I love our home  it's so big and beautiful and lately it's been getting more and more manageable, soon the yard will be the pride and joy both Mike and me want it to be and (hopefully) i'll grow pounds and pounds of vegetables.We've inherited lots of furniture and problems and trash but I love it, this is our home.

By golly we've solved the mystery!

Remember the weird scraggly plant in our front yard that i had no idea what it was ...well it turned out to be this

It's a Peony almost in full bloom .

These are all the plants that are in bloom right now :

and it seems our orange tree is going to do great this year as there were alot of blooms and alot of bees pollinating it, last year we had a total of two, yes I said TWO oranges on that tree it was sad but hooray for bees !!!

All the little cement creatures living in our garden

All inherited and all need to be repainted which I am in the process of doing we also have a couple of penguins and  a sleeping sonbrero guy , we had some donkeys but they went to the great cement heaven in the sky

So I havn't written anything in about a month ...

this is only because there was nothing to write about i believe it was dreary and rainy and awful it was depressing to say the least. Now it seems that the sunny days are here to stay.

Update on my seedlings : Rememember how I had like 16 tomato plants, well hardening them off  about half of the plants died (very tragic) so did the asparagus beansand the lettuce. I'll try the asparagus beans again once the raised beds are in hopefully they'll do much better there.
The corn I planted is doing great  I'll have to get  some bigger pots and transplant them soon they've outgrown their starter home and the raised beds aren't up yet :( . The little marigolds I planted the second time around in a  ice cube tray of all places are doing extremely well that I had to transplant them into bigger containers they don't have flowers yet but they're about 2 inches tall  and have lots of foliage.Lastly the peas I planted got way too big for their containers as well and I transplanted them into the succulents raised bed since there was space for them there and I ran out of big pots to put things in.

The rain has been preventing us from building raised beds for many weeks. Mike and me can't work the soil because it's been so muddy, hopefully now we'll get a chance to do it.I've started to move the old border rocks that were in place where the raised beds will go, those things have been there so long I need a crowbar to pry them from the soil it's a good thing my mama didn't raise a weakling.Mike will work the soil after all the rocks are removed and even it out after which we'll add weed cloth and place our raised beds there.Ta Ta  for now 

Nature walk

The geese look just like statues

...til they took flight

So today we just needed to get out of the house and we decided we'd grab a little take out and head on down to the river trails and see what we could see

A couple of little wild mushrooms we saw 

Some wildflowersSome really cute grass,

  and ofcourse last but not least the river

Rain Rain GO AWAY !

So as you can tell it's still raining gosh darnit, I guess it gives me a little more time to get my $$ together for the things I'll need for the raised garden. A certain little bank which shall remain nameless is still taking care of my financial problem, you'd think they'd have it resolved in less than a week (sigh).On the bright side my seedlings seem to be doing great I have a total of 18 tomato plants six of which are outside braving the elements. Mike was great, since the corn his grandpa left me didn't sprout he bought me an early variety sweet corn. :)
Sunny days will come again...

My progress so far ...

Ok so this is the lowdown so far..
That thing that was growing in the brown pot died :( I do believe slugs ate it "Alas I knew ye well."I have no idea what the red looking plant in the front yard is but it gives beautiful flowers right around easter they are HUGE about 6 inches in diameter and pink, that plant is doing awfully well.

All six of the cucumber plants are growing two are rather slow butI don't mind i'm just trying to figure out where to put them now, although they are a bush type variety which is good for spacing. It seems that we are going to enjoy alot of tomatos this season because I planted too many seeds (I assumed they wouldn't all germinate). I do believe there is about 12 little seedlings so far. We have 2 Zuchinni plants which is perfect.One jalapeno seedling. none of the corn seeds germinated I assume the seeds were too old, neither did any of the peppers or the lisbon onions :(. The Hydrangea is doing a whole lot better than it did last year although I really must fertilize it it seriously needs it. I've planted some sunflowers and hope they germinate. For the first time ever I've managed to grow little baby marigolds YAY! ME! so those little yellow faces will be in this yard this year. The lettuce is doing great holding their own.Last but not least the asparagus beans are growing very quickly they've already gotten to be about 3 inches high which is huge compared to all the other little seedlings .

As to the kitties pictures they were just hanging around and being their adorable fuzzy little selves. The black one is B.K the white and gray is Keekers and the orange with white is Garfield. Garfield and B.K have adopted us as their would be family while keekers on the other hand has been here since Mike was in 2nd grade, she's about 15 years old.

My raised bed project has been put off for a little while longer as there was a mishap with the bank and I need some time to resolve it, or rather they need some time to resolve that issue. The same goes for my little worm bin :(

I am adament in my resolve, I shall acomplish these things I have set myself to do !