Tag: in the garden

In the garden

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

On Wednesday I had a lot of computerwork to do. That evening I didn’t feel too great. I felt irritated, disconnected and depressed. So I decided it was time for a computer free day.
Thursday I spent a lot of time in the garden. And that worked. It always does…

From the garden

~ Maggie ~ 1 Comment

I was going to show you what I’ve been knitting, but I’ve got other things to tell you about first.
The garden for instance. Not just the back yard (going slowly, but getting there), but also about the other parts of our land that I’m trying to let things grow.

The plum tree is doing great this year. Last year we had no plums at all, but I guess it needed some rest. This is half of what we picked this year.

I was planning to make jam, but we ate them all.

And look at my tomato plant:

I guess I wasn’t the only one that tried to catch every tiny bit of sun we got last week.
Even that pepper finally started to turn red.

So I made salad from our own garden last night (I also have some basil growing).

I know it wasn’t much and my family laughed because I was so happy with it (it grew in my own garden!) but they did like it. And that’s what counts.

The back yard

~ Maggie ~ 1 Comment

When we bought this house, there was no back yard. The land behind the house was owned by the neighbors. But we didn’t care, since we had room to sit at the side of the house. Still, when the neighbors offered to sell it to us, we didn’t hesitate to say yes.
It was beautifully designed, that garden, but not to our taste. Too much tiling, too little green. But we didn’t really have time to change much those first years, since there was a lot to do inside the house (like building rooms for the girls).
After a few years we decided to buy a free standing swimming pool. So we pulled that design garden apart and had a few years of fun. But then the summers got colder and it just was to expensive to heat that much water. Also, we had a leak, so we kind of let it go.

This summer our back yard was a mess. Half a swimming pool and lots of trash.
Last week I decided to do something about it. I got rid of all the trash and then I started making a fire place with the material we had left from the design garden. (inspiration for that I found here)

I don’t have any before pictures, but if you look at the rest of the garden in this photo, you get the idea.

Anyway, we were happy and made a fire that same night.

We found out the chairs were too close to the fire this way and that we actually still didn’t like those tiles. I found some stones at a thrift store and a few more tiles and tried a new layout.

I like it!

When I finish saving the gravel from all over the garden, we’re going to build raised beds (there’s a concrete slab under most of the garden, so we can’t just plant around it.
So much fun to do. Since we try to do this very low cost, every step is a creative challenge.

But for now, we love, love, love that fire place (it has been on our wish list for years).