Some of you may remember that last year I started renovating our backyard. We’d removed our leaking swimming pool and were left with quite a mess. I got some inspiration online and started from the middle. The plan was to have a little room to sit and use the rest of the garden to grow vegetables.

This is where I left off last year:

That would be a fireplace and one raised bed. We had all these grand plans of building the rest of the raised beds and filling them up before March, to make sure I had the whole planting season to work with this year.

Well, life got in the way. So picture the garden like in the pictures above, but with lots and lots of weeds overgrowing it. That’s where I started a few weeks ago.

But… I worked through it and by the end of last week I had this:

The plan was to raise that bed a bit higher (there’s a concrete slab about 7 inches deep in the front half of it), but there’s no way we’re getting to that this year. So I’m just making do and putting in plants that don’t need to root very deep.

Of course I couldn’t wait to plant something in it. Since it was rather late in season I bought some plants to put in and searched for crops that could still be sown this late. (Oh! Isn’t it wonderful that I was able to do this planting on the first day of Summer? It just felt so right to be digging in the soil on that very day.)

Doesn’t that look wonderful?

We finished the bed we already built last Saturday (it just needed to be lined so the soil didn’t fall out). It took just a few bagsof soil (ha! kidding, it needed 70 bags) to fill it up… (we need to buy the soil in bags, the backyard is over one metre below the level of our house and there is no way we can ride cars, trailers or even wheelbarrels of loose soil down there, we have to carry the bags in by hand).

I instantly moved the leeks to the deeper bed. I think they’ll like it better there.

Now there is one more bed to be improvised (the rest of the garden and some stairs for easy coming and going will have to wait till next year), some more leeks (one of my favorite vegetables) to be bought, some seeds to grow (though if they all come up I have no idea where to put all the plants) and a lot of plants to be watched and pampered (or not – they seem to grow very well on their own).

This week my friend Elizabeth (who blogs at Bits of Sunshine) and I are doing a photo project together. We thought it would be fun to come up with a word for each day, take a photo that shows that word and post our pictures together.

E’s picture:

Want to join us? Leave a link  to your picture in the comments here and/or on Elizabeth’s blog.

This week my friend Elizabeth (who blogs at Bits of Sunshine) and I are doing a photo project together. We thought it would be fun to come up with a word for each day, take a photo that shows that word and post our pictures together.

E’s picture:

Want to join us? Leave a link  to your picture in the comments here and/or on Elizabeth’s blog.

This week my friend Elizabeth (who blogs at Bits of Sunshine) and I are doing a photo project together. We thought it would be fun to come up with a word for each day, take a photo that shows that word and post our pictures together.

(hee, we had the same thoughts with this theme… gifts from faraway friends)

E’s picture:

Want to join us? Leave a link  to your picture in the comments here and/or on Elizabeth’s blog.

This week my friend Elizabeth (who blogs at Bits of Sunshine) and I are doing a photo project together. We thought it would be fun to come up with a word for each day, take a photo that shows that word and post our pictures together.

E’s thorns:

Want to join us? Leave a link  to your picture in the comments here and/or on Elizabeth’s blog.

This week my friend Elizabeth (who blogs at Bits of Sunshine) and I are doing a photo project together. We thought it would be fun to come up with a word for each day, take a photo that shows that word and post our pictures together.

My wings (a hawk that was circling high above our heads last night)

E.’s wings:

Want to join us? Leave a link  to your picture in the comments here and/or on Elizabeth’s blog.

I struggled with this theme. Tools on Tuesday. I considered taking pictures of my sewing machine (but when was the last time I used it?), my knitting needles (but I already have oh so many pictures of those*), the garden tools (but they’re not really photogenic), my husband’s tools…

But in the end I realized that these are the tools I use the most. My stove, my pans, and above all that little knife in the bottom left corner of the picture.

That’s a potato knife, but in our house it is used for almost everything. Peeling potatoes, cutting up meat and veggies (yes, I do have other, bigger knives, but why bother? this works great), peeling and cutting fruit, chopping off chunks of cheese, opening packages, cutting electric wire, you name it and we cut it with humble little knives like this. We’ve gone through quite a few over the years , but they are very cheap, so I buy new, sharp knifes when we run out of them, in a different color to know which is which. This is one of the former batches, I guess all the newer (lime green) ones were taken.

I stopped hesitating about posting my little tool when I saw how Elizabeth’s tool is even more about using what’s on hand and thinking out of the box than mine…

Want to join us? Leave a link  to your picture in the comments here and/or on Elizabeth’s blog.

*I’m working on putting all my pictures (including the ones that appeared on former blogs) on flickr. Stay tuned for that!

My blog friend Elizabeth (from Bits of Sunshine) and I are doing a little photo project this week. We've come up with some themes to take pictures of and will be posting both our pictures on our blogs. It will be fun to see the similarities and the differences between our take on these themes.

I first clicked over to Elizabeths blog in 2008 when she commented on Soulemama just after she started her own blog, doing a bit of “shameless advertising” (her words). I like what I saw and we ended up reading and commenting on each other's blogs ever after. When I am blogless (that does happen every once in a while) we send each other email to keep up, and sometimes fun surprises she sent arrive in the mail here.

I do have a love/hate relationship with the whole concept of internet, but this connection, this  friendship (and I truly believe this has grown into a real friendship) is one of the things I love and cherish about it.

Well, those are a lot of words to start a photo project with, so I'll stop rambling.

Here are today's pictures. A hard one to start with since I don't like any pictures of me (but it was my idea, so maybe I need this). I took them myself, arm stretched out and this is the only one of about 100 pictures that I liked. Sort of. Oh well. (I think on this picture I'm really smiling, at the silliness of taking lots of pictures of oneself in the backyard. I like that.)



And that's her photo. The difference between these two photo's is so funny. I'm never on photos unaware, I'm always in control of the camera(s) and my family knows I really don't want my pictures taken. Maybe it's time to loosen up.

Want to join us? Leave a link  to your picture in the comments here and/or on Elizabeth's blog.

Right now I am…

:: surprised to find a few plums in the tree. We thought there weren’t any

:: thinking it’s funny that I can take so many pictures inside when the color of the day is forest/grass green. I didn’t even start taking pictures of my grandmother’s breadbox and other things in my kitchen

:: guessing I love green

:: pulling out a lot of green in the little strip of garden at the side of the house. I’m letting go of the idea of growing medicinal herbs (for several reasons, mostly because I’m not feeling confident using home grown herbs) and turning it into a flowerbed

:: looking forward to buying flowers for it

:: wondering if it’s possible to plant a rainbow of flowers? Could that work? I think it would

Right now I am…

:: catching up on those colors (I can’t post them in the pool anymore, but I think they’d make a nice collage at the end of the month. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood to do anything useful today)

:: taking a few weeks off from writing (books and stories that is, not this blog). All three girls are having exams here and the grand total of all the stress flying around here is taking up all my energy.

:: giving myself some time to play instead. Photography, knitting, blogging, maybe even some sewing. I think that’s just what I need to be the patient, helpful, reliable mother they need right now.

:: hoping they all pass. We just heard Esther  passed her minor – English translator -, so that’s a good start. (thanks again, E., for helping her out. She got 80% on that particular translation)