Our Corner of the World

Tonight Regan, Jack and I rested in the grass in the backyard and decided that if all we do over our three day Memorial Day weekend is just that it will be just fine. Approaching our third summer in this house our yard is finally starting to come along. What used to be a muddy wasteland surrounded by rusty chain link fencing where grass refused to grow is now nearly fully covered in grass and surrounded by a lovely privacy fence. We’ve still got a ways to go with the grass because our ultimate goal is to have a yard as lush as Alec Baldwin’s head of hair, but we’re taking it a step at a time. At least our dog doesn’t look like this after playing in the yard anymore. 

Thanks to Regan’s parents the decorative garden bed that borders the back of our house is rich with hostas and ground cover. Somehow we were able to dig up, travel over two hours with, and transplant over 20 varieties of plants from their yard in Champaign without losing more than one plant. We saved hundreds of dollars by being plant bandits and our yard got a huge facelift.

Last weekend we officially got our summer garden started. If all goes as planned we’ll have tomatoes, green peppers, peas, butternut squash, brussell sprouts, strawberries, lavender and basil. Our goal was to make a dent in our summer grocery bill and to also make enough tomato sauce and pesto to freeze and eat regularly this winter. I think this weekend our goal is to make a portable lettuce table so we have a place for lettuce to thrive and hopefully be able to grow it well into the fall. We’re also finishing up our rain barrel. Regan made it a while ago, but we’ve yet to build the base for it and adjust the gutter to accommodate it. We’ll see how it all goes. Working towards some idea of sustainability little by little.