Garden Planning 2018 and DIY Wreath

This year I set out determined to have a magazine worthy garden.  I was sick of fighting weeds, looking at boring rows and being over whelmed with the idea of "work" when I really enjoy gardening and the rewards I can reap from it.  Early this year I was up late diagramming and coloring my own little garden plan that I plan on bringing to life!  Below is my plan of 6 raised beds and each bed has all the items I plan on growing, not pictured is the arbor and entrance near my chicken coop that is going to be the pretty entrance to my raised bed garden.  I have started the process and as soon as everything is finished up and green I'll be sure to post about it and also how closely I ended up following the below plan. ;)

As soon as my Christmas decor came down my front and back door were naked of any decor.  My grapevine wreath from the past 2 years was tired and I was uninspired by it so I set out to Canton in February to find the perfect decor to put together a new inspired wreath.  I didn't know what I wanted but I did know what I DIDN'T want.  When I stumbled on some bicycle wheels out in the "junk" section of Canton the lightening struck....A BICYCLE RIM wreath!  I got a small to medium old bicycle wheel for $5 and picked up some nice floral at Paul Michael on the way out.  

I love how it turned out and since this picture I added a little welcome plaque at the top and its the perfect finish.  I love how this ordinary item was able to provide another useful purpose and really cheap!

HAPPY SPRING!

Backyard Beauty

Since graduating last May one of my main goals was to get my yard the way I wanted it by adding a pergola to the back, taking down the volleyball court, and adding flowers.  I finally got everything just the way I wanted it before our wedding and I love it.  It's simple but adds the right touches to enjoy our back yard.  There is a ton of room to grow it to be more but right now I'm satisfied with my few flowers and growing green grass.  Now if that Texas heat would come on so I can enjoy sunning myself on my Sunbrella loungers.  

finished back patio with pergola, picnic table and loungers

my pretty daisies keep blooming

picnic table from Wayfair adds the perfect touch and added seating by the grill

looking out into the yard from the back this used to be a volleyball court but early this year we took it out and made it part of the yard again so that's why our grass is scarce back here.  Posts and lights left over from our wedding reception that I plan on leaving up.  

view from yard looking towards house- hanging baskets have citronella plants to keep away mosquitoes 

back by large tree we have a fire pit and more chairs as well as my old picnic table that I really want to get rid of. 

chicken coop cleaned up nicely and I made a small bed in front of it with drought resistant flowers for the full sun and heat exposure it gets

one of our hens laying her eggs

next to the coop is the garden that I didn't do much with this year. I have cauliflower, kale, spinach and onions all begging to be harvested

I'm so glad that I can mark off the backyard redo off my list of things to do.  It has turned out to be a perfect place to enjoy Case playing, grilling for ourselves and friends, and just sitting and enjoying the end of our day.  

FINALLY....the Finished Chicken Coop

My unfinished chicken coop had been a fixture in my yard for months and months.....over a year!!  After  I graduated I really wanted to mark off ALL the things on my to do list for around the house and finishing the chicken coop was one of them. Hendrik wasn't going to do it himself and his plan was to have some of the guys that work for us do it, but of course...they are always too busy!  I took it upon myself to ask a good carpenter I happened to know come give me an estimate on a couple outdoor projects. He told me how much and how long it would take him I was like whatever it takes let's finish this bad boy.

A couple weeks after that my coop was finished and all it took was 2 days worth of work.  As soon as it was finished I raced to the feed store which still had chickens and purchased 15.  One of our workers had chicken houses and had some chickens that Pilgrims wouldn't take back because of their color so he brought me 7 of those.  I was off to a great start. 

That following weekend I went to Lowe's and got my boxes, corn flowers, and lavender to make the cutest little flower boxes to go on the front of my coop.  I loved the way it turned out.  Now in September by flowers have burnt and my flower boxes need a couple drainage holes drilled for next year but my coop is still functioning and I couldn't be happier with it.

Garden 2015

Boy is this post delayed but I'm glad I waited because my garden, along with everyone else's sucked this year.  

I started off with the best of intentions by adding size, more variety of vegetables, and increased quantity of each plant but then the 2015 Texas monsoon season hit us!

 

While it rained I was able to keep the grass and weeds out of my garden and other than making ditches for drainage my garden was thriving. 

Then it kept raining and kept raining and kept raining well into May.  That's when I knew it wasn't going to be that great.  By this point I still have my plants but they weren't able to really produce or grow in size due to the rain and lack of extended sunshine.  

By the time it stopped raining the sun came out and hasn't quit. In a week's time what was stunted and lush was now just simply burnt.  My tomatoes and bell pepper plants survived but they aren't producing much at all.  

Hendrik is hell bent on saving the bell peppers but they aren't putting out hardly anything at all.  The grass and weeds took over the rest of the garden and I've given up.  I've talked to tons of others about their gardens this year and they have all had the same luck.  

 

This year in gardening just wasn't a good year.  Hendrik tells me that's just part of it some years will be great and then some not so great.  

The only people that I noticed had a great garden while it was raining was the people with raised beds.  The raised bed gardens were able to drain and the plants were still able to grow and produce but again once the rain quit they were burnt by the sun.  

 

The pictures I have are from the beginning of the process when I was oh so hopeful and dreaming of a lot of spaghetti sauce.  

Until next year garden...I'm going to make you my bitch!

My Garden 2.0

I did my very first garden in 2012, see HERE, and this year I’m doing another….

New gardening space, new method, all a little spur of the moment but I got it all done in one day. It didn't start out as pretty as my first garden since it was a complete spontaneous decision but I believe that my plants are going to be strong and better tasting.  At the end of March / beginning of April, when spring first hit us, I was running errands and had budgeted 80 bucks to spend at Lowe's for potted plants for the front door and well…veggies. I walked out 150 bucks later and had all that plus bird seed and potting soil. I wasn’t able to plant my veggies that weekend but I did get on the ball the following Sunday. I had it all planned out and thought that this was going to be a perfect project that wouldn’t take no time…well Hendrik pretty much had to do my entire project because my so called plans sort of unraveled before my eyes. My tiller wouldn’t start, then the tractor broke but finally he finished up the breaking ground/tilling part and I was able to plant. All Sunday afternoon I worked my fingers bloody and black and got all my little babies in the ground. With a little load of chicken poo that my honey spread for me they are going to shoot up in no time, especially after all the rain we’ve had.

 

I ended up planting a total of 20 tomato plants, 32 bell peppers, and 10 squash/zucchini. If you refer back to my first garden HERE you will see that I had more of a variety of vegetables like watermelon, cucumbers, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, bell peppers, squash, okra, and zucchini but seeing what all I used most of and still do when cooking I thought it best to plant less variety but more quantity so I can pack the freezer for later in the year.

Seeing all that was done over a month and half ago several dramatic gardening events have happened.  Two weeks into my planting before my babies got a good start a light frost came and turned every one of my plants brown.  I just knew they were goners but I hung on to a small sliver of hope and just decided to let them hang out and see if MAYBE they would come back.  Well folks about two or three weeks later I drove by the garden on my way to the shop and BAM!  Under the weeds and grass over-growth were ALL my plants thriving.  That weekend I pulled a lot of the grass so I could see my plants better and since have been working every day after work to totally eliminate the grass and weeds.  My tomatoes have cages, my squash have flowered, and my bell peppers are fixing to start producing.

Here is a small update of when I started pulling grass and weeds. I have over half cleaned up NOW and hope to finish the rest this week.

 

 

I'm so excited that my garden hung on through my spontaneous decisions, frost, and lack of tending but I've turned it around and look forward to harvesting constantly throughout the summer and into fall. 

 

 

Favorite Posts

Day 21 of the Blog Every Day in May challenge is to list a few of your favorite posts.

 
Problems on the Farm....squash bugs and chicken hemorrhoids :(

Hercules Takes Over... probably my all time favorite post because to me it sounds exactly like him if he could really talk. I laugh every time I read it.

Love is Patient...because I open up and go a bit deep

Those are the ones that I can think of off hand. 

Go check them out and just cruise my archives...I mean it's my blog...I wouldn't write it if I didn't like it.

So since I'm obviously not a good judge of my own content what are you favorite posts I've done?

Around the Homestead

The past couple weeks we have had some great additions, changes, and improvements around our little homestead.  I'm sure that you are like me and when it starts to get a bit like Spring I am ready to clean up the yard, do flowers, a garden, and just get the house looking amazing.  Spruce things up I guess. 

I have had a list of to-dos for a while now and just about all of them had to do with the outside of the house.  So far we have made a good dent in them and I have a few more ideas/wants that I plan to accomplish hopefully soon.  After I get the house and garden the way I want them it's time to fix Peggy Sue to my liking.  I started a bit of demolition on the inside yesterday but will wait to post those pictures another day.

I've been wanting to either pull out all the bushes in the front of the house or trim them back or something so we did both.  The previous owners planted these holly bushes and let them get way too tall and they really took away from the house.  We trimmed them way back over half of the previous height was cut down.  They are now just sticks and will take about a year to get their fullness back but once they do we can manage them and keep them at bush height instead of the previous BRUSH look.  After we trimmed them we pulled several up to clean up the look a bit more.  The pulling part was what I was worried about because these bushes had been here for over 10 years.  I knew that their roots had to be deeply planted and wanted to be sure to get them all.  I also didn't want my yard rutted up but both of those worries were laid to rest when Lincoln came into the picture.  He pulled his truck to the front of the house hooked the chain around the bush, ran it OVER a tire, and then hooked the other end to his truck.  I was in charge of holding the tire steady as he got the chain tight and then hauling butt out of the way as he slowly and EASILY pulled out the bushes.  I couldn't believe this little hair brained idea of his worked but it did. 

 

Since the chain was ran over the top of the tire the pull was more upward instead of directly forwards which pulled all the bush out of the ground instead of breaking it off at the base. (what I was worried about )  I was very impressed.  I told him good job and wondered how he had come up with that but he said he You tubed it!  Amazing!  The man loves YouTube!  I'm learning to never doubt his methods.

This video is pretty much exactly what we did MINUS the dummy proof instructions....who wouldn't know how to hook a chain around something? Geez!

 

Hercules is still inside but his wound is a ton better.  He can go without the cone now and his wound isn't bandaged.  He goes outside more than in the past few weeks but he is still sleeping inside and has to stay locked up when we are gone so the other dogs don't open his wound back up since it's not fully enclosed!  This is a picture Lincoln sent me the other day!  Hilarious!

 

His message read..."If this isn't the definition of sitting on your ass then I don't know what its"  definitely correct. LOL

 

Tuesday Lincoln built the chickens a yard.  They have had free rein the past year that we've had chickens but they started wondering further and further.  The past couple weeks they were tearing up the neighbor's yard through the pasture so they had to be contained.  Now they have a happy little place to tear up that's all their own.  Lincoln did a great job and all in just an afternoon!  He's so handy.

 

Speaking of chickens we have some how dwindled down to just 4 hens and a rooster.  With summer coming up it's the perfect time to get more chicks so he bought 12. They are growing so fast and are being kept separate until they are big enough. 

 

This was 2 weeks ago and they are double that size or bigger now

 

Probably in another 2 weeks they will be big enough to go to the big coop with the others.  Moose is also growing big!  He chews on EVERYTHING and is so cute and playful.  We are working on teaching him manners and he seems to be doing well at this point.  He minds really well.

 

I have pretty much neglected my front porch since I've moved into this house.  I mean it's just hard to get motivated about it.  We don't have a lot of visitors and no one ever uses the front door WHICH I HATE!  But seeing that the rest of the house is in tip top shape I really wanted to make the front of our house inviting.  I'm on the hunt for some free pallets to make flower boxes out of...sort of like this....

 

In the meantime I painted the front door black instead of the all white.

before

after

I also got 2 ferns for my hanging pots Friday at Lowe's (more on that in a bit) and put one in the front and the other in the back.  My ferns from last year did great and lasted all the way until after the first freeze.  I think they are so homey and country looking.  On top of the black door, the newly hung fern, and my 2 vintage chairs the front porch is coming around!

 

Once my flower boxes are done I will place one on either side of the brick step and I think we can call it good.

 

So Friday night Amber and I headed to Sulphur Spring to run some errands after we ate adult mac-n-cheese from Cibovino!!! OH MAN it was good.  I had to go by Atwood's to get some peanuts for a friend's baby shower next weekend and then after we headed to Lowe's to get paint for the above door, ferns, paint supplies for the trim painting I planned on doing, and also 4 knockout rose bushes.  I accomplished getting all those things plus some. ;)  I thought heck while we are here let's check out the cabinets because I need one for Peggy Sue.  I found the perfect one and went ahead and loaded it up.  Across from the cabinets was counter top and how convenient that Peggy Sue would also need that but not at $86 no thank you!  An associate came over and asked if I needed help with anything and although I didn't need help I did have a question.  I told her I was looking for counter top options but I didn't want to spend a lot of money seeing it was for my little camper and only needed a small amount.  She said they don't carry scraps and cutoffs but they do have damaged merchandise. My ears perked up...oh yeah...let me check out these damaged goods.  I ended up getting a full sheet of Formica at a regular price of approximately $75 for a whopping $20! Can't beat that. 

 

Seeing there was no room for anything else and I went in wanting to spend a certain amount and was nearing doubling that I figured we better head out with what we had....

 

So we checked out and headed to my TRUCK Corolla to load up and head home.  Will it all fit....OOFFF COURSE!

 

Yesterday I planted my rose bushes.  2 on either side of my A/C unit on the East side of my house.

 

 

I got so much accomplished yesterday.  I started painting the trim like I wanted to do before I get my gutters installed but once I did a little swipe I knew that I would never do a good job if I could do it without killing myself or someone in the process so I gave up that job and as I type now a nice man named Armando is out painting my trim for $200.  TOTALLY WORTH IT!  Now the painting will be done and tomorrow I will call to get my gutters installed.  It has been a productive weekend and past couple of weeks.  We are growing and improving!  Today I plan on trying to make a couple outdoor cushions and maybe working on getting my garden ready.  I'm not very motivated on the garden this year but I do need to do it.  The savings are just awesome and I've learned some great ways of freezing pretty much anything so I don't have to worry about wasting my harvest.

 

I hope you have a great Sunday afternoon!