the outside part of homemaking

Part of homemaking is the OUTSIDE of the house too. We started our garden in February with a bucket of mixed potting soil and stuff and some water. Yay MUD!! Mix it up with your hands and then make it into blocks with a piece of PVC pipe.

The garden blocks have the seeds pressed into them, and then are put in trays under grow lights in our basement. We have a mister to water them once or twice a day, and in about 10 days, we have this! JE's petunia flowers were the first things up this year.

In April, at LONG last, the snow was gone and the ground softened up. Last year, our garden was in the back yard but it didn't get enough sun. So this year, step 1 was for Adam to till under most of our front yard. We laid out pallets with compost dumped into them (the girls helped spread the soil with their kid-sized snow shovels), and ultimately ended up with 6 garden boxes. Last year, we had 4.

Lots of mulch all around. Flowers on the street side, in front of the pallets. Down at the end, near the driveway, we have some small berry bushes as well. The sister missionaries helped one evening with filling the boxes with compost, and planting more flowers.

It ain't gardening without at least one ride in the wheelbarrow.

Still in the laying out stage - there are now 2 more boxes in the stretch of dirt at the top of the picture. Adam also added some dark green wire fencing in the boxes for the peas and tomatoes to climb. The dirt area in the front is where herbs have been planted.

And in the past few days, we've had our little field of tulips, and the peas have indeed starting climbing their fence!

So if you've been wondering why I haven't been posting about sewing ... THIS. This is what we've been doing. (And when it was still snowy outside, I've been working on my first ever pieced quilt. It's awesome, but it's full sized for a bed so it's taking a REALLY LONG time!)