Our Garden

One of the reasons we really wanted to buy a house with a yard is to have a garden. In our apartment we enjoyed growing flowers and veggies in pots on our deck. I love getting my garden gloves dirty and watching seeds and seedlings grow a little more every day. And I love being able to go outside to get the ingredients for dinner.

We've been at this house for almost 2 years, but last year we just didn't have enough time to build our garden before planting season.

We were determined to get it done this year.

The concrete blocks we used to build it were 36 pounds each, and I lost count at about 100 blocks we needed. So Colin got weightlifting training by having to lift every block into the truck, and load every one on the wheelbarrow, load them onto the ground and then lift again to get it into place. He had help from a friend for one load but other than that he lifted TONNES. Literally.

We also needed 2 truckloads full of gravel and 3 truckloads full of soil. I must admit that I over-did myself and helped quite a bit with the shovelling of gravel and dirt, which are probably both on the pregnancy "no-no" list.

I was amazed at how Colin was able to build this wall on a sloped surface, and get it perfectly level! He did a great job!! I shouldn't be amazed though, he's good at every home reno he tries.

Here is the end result:

Notice the back left corner in the above photo. I went out for a while one day a few weeks back and I came home and Colin had done this:

He put in a pond! I had so much fun planting flowers around it!

In the garden we planted leeks, chives, basil, cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, chili peppers, green peppers, jalepenos, carrots, eggplant, zuchinni and rhubarb. Along the retaining wall I planted sweet peas and sunflowers which I hope will cover the wall. Then of course in the corner of the garden is the pond and flower section.

We have sketches that we did last year for our garden ideas and it looks almost identical to our plans.

This clematis is in our front garden, not the back one, but I had to put a photo of it anyway. It's covered with about 15 of these gorgeous 6" diameter flowers!

The flowers in the front yard (in planter boxes, pots, hanging baskets and in the garden) make the house look so cheerful, and the garden in the back is our new little piece of tranquility.