Adventures in Gardening

When Kyle bought our home the back yard left something to be desired of. The sprinklers where disabled and there was nothing but dirt and weeds. Kyle spent two years planting grass seed and nurturing his baby lawn. This year we decided to plant flowers and two tomato plants. This picture of our amazing plants was taken about a month after planting them. At this point they where nearly as tall as I am. They grew to be taller than the fence and have SO many tomatoes. They are just now turning red and I am excited to start making salsa with them, hopefully over the weekend.

We are learning to garden by trial and error. Kyle worked at a green house 20 years ago, before his mission, and so he has a lot of knowledge about gardening. We are learning about the importance of selecting plants that do well in the zone we live in. How to keep bugs off the plants with out chemicals and with chemicals, because lets face it...I am fine with chemicals. We have finally begun to win the war against the slugs. They are a nasty thing to have around. I like to think of them as leaches for plants, sucking the life right out of them. But the most important thing we are learning is to ask Marilyn.

Marilyn is my dear aunt who also happens to be a brilliant gardener. Her yard is a masterpiece. I am in awe when I see it. It has little paths that run between flower beds, benches to sit and enjoy the flowers all around, a little garden cottage that looks like it belongs in a fairy tale. She is so talented. She has become my gardening mentor, and recently brought me buckets of starts and bulbs to make my little garden beautiful. Kyle spent one afternoon planting most of them for me. In a couple of weeks he will plant the bulbs. I think there must be nearly 50 tulip bulbs alone, not to mention numerous other bulbs. The garden is going to be amazing in the spring. The majority of the tulip bulbs are unknown in their variety, so it will be fun to see what comes up in the spring. Then we will begin cataloging them and making notes for the next year. Maybe one day, after years of practice I will have a garden like Marilyn's.