here's hoping for a green thumb

here is a picture of our backyard before it was legally ours. in the snow. 

 

 that yellow circle i drew in there for you?  a big, yellow, dried out dead spot.  we are thinking their dog used this part of the lawn for his/hers toilet... for #1 anyway.  he/she used the #2 toilet on the far south side of the lawn.  once the snow melted, we realized what we had on our hands.  after a week or so of moving and unpacking, i wanted a change of scenery, so i set out to work on the yard.  i dug up all of the dead patch - they had apparently tried sod there because it just came up in sheets... it never really grew i guess.  then i raked up and turned the soil and laid down that green stuff with seed and fertilizer... that patch repair stuff.  i watered diligently every day to no avail.  three weeks later (it was supposed to sprout in 7-10 days) we still had that green stuff sitting on top of our dead spot.  the even more frustrating part?  the grass seed was just sitting on top of the green stuff, mocking me with it's un-sprouted-ness.  so i gave up.  i decided to dig and mix it up and start over again.  i did this and left the dirt for a few days before looking at it again.  my parents were in town for a bit that afternoon, so when they were getting the updated grand tour of things, we went out to the yard to look at the pretty flowers and such.  my mom noticed i had grass.  i didn't believe her until i got down to look and there they were!  my tiny little grass sprouts had finally decided to grow!!!  it was very exciting, i tell you.

 so, now we wait for it to fill in.  we've decided our lawn is kind of a sad lawn right now - it's got as much yellow as it does green.  and in the backyard, quite a bit of small dirt patches thrown in for good measure.  hopefully we can figure out how to take care of it so it can perk up like all of it's neighbor lawn-buddies who look so beautiful in their own dark, lush shades of emerald!

ok, enough with the lawn.  onto the more exciting garden!!!  leave it to me, someone who has never grown so much as a flower in the ground (and who doesn't know the difference between violet plants and weeds), to try to take on 92 square feet of garden ground.  needless to say, i've been on the phone with my parents many, many, many times in the last few weeks with a question here and a question there.  good parents.  they are so patient :)  

weston built the beautiful boxes and we filled and planted them about 2 1/2 weeks ago.  (if you go back to the snowy picture, we put the garden boxes where that big pile of bark was.)  i kid you not, every 3 days or so i have actual dreams about my garden and the excitement of seeing full grown plants in there.  many many dreams.  it's ridiculous, i know.

 i know my garden signs are washing away and kind of hard to read, so here are the beets.  i love how they are all marching in their misshapen row in this first photo (you may have to click on it to enlarge if they're too tiny)

 and one of three rows of peas!  i'm the most excited about these - hopefully we get a good enough crop to eat fresh peas several times this summer.

 onion - can you make out the limey-green dots in there?  they're there, i promise!

 

clearly, i'm very excited about this.  my mom said it best the other day - it's magic.  it really is.  it's so fun to go out and check every day (or a few times every day) to see who else is springing up and pushing their way through that soil!