Taming the wild yard!

We have owned this house for 5 summers now and are finally planting our first garden. When we moved in the yard had seen some rough times, the whole thing was an overgrown jungle. We slowly pruned shrubs and weeded flower beds, but for the first 3 summers I was pregnant or had a brand new baby, so getting out of the house and gardening was not at the top of my list. Last year my goal was to keep the lawn alive and plant some flowers in the front flower beds and I succeeded so this year I'm challenging myself even more! I wish we would have taken some before pictures, the back yard was pretty scary!


We have some garden spots around the windows, Mike cleaned out the yucky mess that had been building up for years and years (Mike is my hero, I was too terrified of all the spiders and bugs to even go near there until he had it all cleaned out, as you can see, he did a terrific job!)


The boys LOVE their watering cans, they don't want me to use the hose, they prefer to do everything by hand with the watering cans. There was no grass in the back yard, just weeds, but we're slowly building up the lawn, it still has a lot of work before it will be barefoot ready, but we can't wait!



Yep, that's the famous Dollar thumbs up, Wes was so excited about our new garden patch! We planted peas on the far left, lettuce in the middle and carrots on the right. The boys helped me rake the dirt until it was all even, then we sprinkled the seeds in and patted the dirt down on top and finally gave them a nice cool drink of water- it was great! With the window beds full, now we're trying to decide where to put everything else!


Again, I wish we had before pictures, but here is Mike just about done cleaning out what will soon become the strawberry patch. He found that big chunk of glass, hopefully there's not too much more floating around in there!


We have this big, old apple tree in the side yard and while Mike and I were planting the lilac hedge Wes was busy learning how to climb a tree. It's pretty low to the ground, so after a few tries he could climb up and jump down all by himself and he was very proud of himself!