Backyard-ing It

One of the things we were looking forward to most about owning a home was having a back yard. Mostly for Noodles, but I have many fond memories sitting on my parents' back deck enjoying the beautiful evening after eating dinner outside. It's nice to have another semi-private place to relax, enjoy company and hang out.

We've been doing a little patio/backyard sprucing up and here's what we've got so far:

Just last weekend we bought a clearance patio set, which unfortunately hasn't gotten as much use this week as I was hoping. I was looking forward to eating lunch outside with Noodles during my lunch breaks, but this insane heat has been making it difficult for me to look work-presentable after about 5 minutes out there.

It's just so nice to have somewhere to sit outside now. I have visions of lazy dinners on the patio, watching Noodles play and then enjoying a book while Kody studies :) What do you think, babe? Think you can study outside?

A second thing I was super excited about what the garden that the previous owners left us! It wasn't exactly in the greatest condition - weeds and leftover onions everywhere, but I had a fun time cleaning it out and getting it ready to plant.

Before:

(Hello Noodles!?)

After:

The garden is planted! From left, we've got cucumbers, carrots, green onions and two types of lettuce. I got these "crops" planted earlier in July, so hopefully come fall we'll see a few veggies of our labor.

Here we've got a little, itty, bitty cucumber plant! We had a bigger one a few days ago, but I came out yesterday and it was gone. *Tear*

And here are a few green onion sprouts!

There are a few other green "things" sprouting up as well, but Kody enjoys telling me that they're just weeds. :-)

I planted these herbs back in St. Charles and they're still alive and sort of active here in C-U! We've got basil on the left and I have no idea what the other two are (oregano and....??)!

And then this happened...

*Tears.* Two pots survived and I keep moving them around the kitchen. Haven't yet found a good home for them. Probably doesn't matter though, since they've been so traumatized from moving and falling!

Here we've got a dying raspberry plant that we had in St. Charles ( and which was sorely neglected during our in-and-out moving weeks) and three asparagus ferns, waiting to be potted.

We took an old flower pot that used to hold our Wii controllers and put it to a better use - asparagus looking beautiful on our new patio table!

I don't have much experience putting my green thumb to work, but my one previous plant responsibility is now very dead and the raspberry plant and herbs that I've had for a few months aren't looking too healthy!

So here's to turning my slightly brown thumb into a bright green thumb.