Gardening with the Shedd's

I tried quite hard to make a punny topic about Garden Shedd's...but it didn't make sense.  SO I ended up going with a drab title to this post. 

😀

 

 

Well, I hope you all have had an excellent week so far!  I mentioned in my last few posts about our garden and how excited I am about it.  Well, I'll post a few pictures in this post to show you what I mean.  I grew up on a farm and never really got too excited about gardening, weeding, or any of that.  But now that I've been away from it for a few years, I really miss being able to just get outside and plant things, see them grow, and tend to them. 

 

When we were living in Baltimore, I attempted to plant flowers and tomatoes, but a few birds ate my plants so I never tried again the next year.  When we moved to New York and saw the big area in our backyard, we decided this year we would try planting a garden. 

 

Almost everyone up here said that we shouldn't plant directly in the ground, but rather, build raised beds and do it that way.  But I convinced Dan that we needed to try a regular garden first and just see how it goes. 

 

A friend came over and plowed up a plot for us and we spent a few weeks tilling it and raking grass clods from it. 

 

On our anniversary (April 30th), we planted tomatoes, cantaloupe, and watermelon in empty cottage cheese containers and yogurt containers indoors.  They sprouted pretty quickly.  I honestly wasn't counting on them to come up at all since we got a lot of the seeds for 50 cents and 25 cents a packet at the dollar tree.  haha.

 

 

Two weeks ago, I transplanted them into bigger containers.  I figured we may as well go ahead and plant them outside, so we did that last week.  As you can see from the picture, Dan was very excited. 

 

 

 

I felt sort of silly outside, taking pictures of our tiny tiny squash plants and corn plants which have already come up, but hey, I'm a hobby farmer.  What can I say? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that's the huge news about our amazing garden.  Dan is supposed to build a fence around it soon, to keep the critters out. 

Also, I love walking around the house and seeing all of the beautiful flowers.  The lilacs were blooming two weeks ago, and now it is the rhododendron.    

 

 

Also, our chickens are growing and Dan made a little cage for them so we can move them about in the yard.  Hopefully their pecking around will decrease the tick population. 

 

 

Also, I'm sort of counting my eggs before the chickens have started laying.  I can't wait to gather eggs.  Hopefully they will start laying this month though.

 

In other not-so-interesting news, we discovered this spot about a mile from our house where there are small waterfalls.  We usually do a sunday afternoon walk there each week now.  Of course, we always bring lots of plastic bags for gathering cans.  I was trying to take a panoramic photo here and must have been moving too fast...because Dan looks hilarious. 

 

 

And Gwendolyn is doing well!  She had her first visit with a pediatrician last week.  She hasn't grown much, but she is back to her birth weight.  So that's good. 

 

Dan loves to prop her up against the cushions on the couch and have father-daughter chats with her.  I think they look hilarious.  Especially Gwen though...

 

 

That's about it for now.  Hopefully my next post will be an update on the church and all the remodeling projects we've completed.  Also, I am hosting a ladies brunch this Saturday, so I will try to take some photos of that. 

Until next time!