Fruits a Plenty

It was a busy weekend for the Swans. We kicked off the weekend with a three hour vegetable garden planting extravaganza on Friday night! We have:

- 12 tomato plants (4 different varieties)
- 18 pepper plants (jalapenos, habeneros, sweet, and hot)
- multiple yellow squash plants
- 3 zucchini plants

And we also planted these seeds:
- chives
- broccoli
- brussell sprouts
- cantaloupes
- basil

It's also possible I'm missing something. Anyway, we have two separate gardens - one big one and one small one....we thought the big one was getting the most sun, but after careful observation during the first really beautiful weekend in GA, we've now realized that the little garden might win the "best all-day sunlight" award. In which case, I hope you like cantaloupe and yellow squash, because we're sure to have A LOT!



The next thing we're going to try to grow is some hops for Mr. Cob's homebrew (aka Mad Swede Brewery). Hops require full sun so we've been analyzing the best place for optimizing their success. The latest idea is to plant them near our deck and let them grow up the side of one of the poles supporting the deck...or possibly in the front yard! Luckily hops look like this, so either option is OK and aesthetically pleasing:




Saturday morning I went to a class on Composting. The instructor had on a shirt similar to this, which I thought was hilarious! I learned a lot from the class - you need something green and something brown to make compost (i.e. grass and leaves) and the more frequently you turn your compost pile, the quicker you'll have good compost. I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'll try it. Instead, I was more drawn to the concept of turning "garbage to garden" where you simply keep non-meat food scraps in a jug and once you have enough you just bury them underground in the part of your garden that is currently empty, cover with dirt and the "garbage" helps enrich your soil. It's kind of the lazy girls way to good soil.

We also got out our bikes for the first time in months and went on a Sunday morning bike ride to the Flying Biscuit for breakfast (yum)! There are some serious hills on the particular route we took and it made me realize that I might not be ready to try a triathlon....I got winded way to quickly on the bike. But it was such a beautiful day and reinforced our decision to move to Kirkwood - I love being able to get to restaurants/shops without setting foot in a car. I also walked to our local library on Saturday - its only a half a mile!

All in all it was a wonderful weekend (we even had date night on Saturday night and friends over for dinner on Sunday - I baked a chocolate sour cream pound cake FROM SCRATCH for dessert - delicious)!! OH, and last week we got a new TV stand...the product details said it is "sage green", but the more I stare at it I'm convinced it's more of an avocado or pistachio green. Regardless of the actual color, I really like it - it opens up our living room. Now we just need a rug....the list is never ending. Here's a not-so-great pic of the TV stand.



I'll post pictures of the vegetable garden tomorrow. And more pics of the wildflowers - the solitary pink flower now has some pink brothers and sisters and some white cousins!!