In the Garden...

Baby bump on a swing- honestly just because I was tired and needed to sit down for a minute.

Last year I put a lot of time and effort into the garden and the backyard.  Our backyard is massive, but was essentially a wasteland when we moved in.  It's still mostly weeds to tell the truth, but we've added things to make it more useful and enjoyable- a garden, a swing set, a sandbox and some grass.  You can see pictures of the work we did last year here.

This year things were complicated by me being pregnant.  I was pretty nauseous during the time when I would have been getting the backyard ready, and I knew by summer I would be tired all the time.  We wanted to keep things simple, but weren't willing to give up on the garden completely.  We decided to stick with green beans, tomatoes and herbs- since those things were the easiest to care for last year, and our family loves them.  We also have our perennial berries: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and grapes.

I'm not worrying about trying to make the backyard "pretty" this year, we're just trying to keep it useable.  The girls planted some tulip bulbs I picked up on a whim from Costco last fall, and they bloomed!  That's lovely, but I'm not adding any other flowers or shrubs, and I'm just trying to keep the small section of lawn we have back there alive, rather than making it any bigger.  We aim to keep the weeds one step below 'jungle' and to keep them away from our vegetables.

This weekend we plan to finish preparing the section of the garden where the tomatoes will go so I can transplant them soon.  I'm a little worried about my tomato and green bean plants- they still look so small!  I'm pretty sure I was concerned about them this time last year, too, and they did just fine.  If memory serves, the tomatoes like it hot, so they should be getting pretty happy now.  If you notice the thermometer in the greenhouse it was 100 degrees F in there by noon today.