This Our House: Episode 5 "I fought the lawn and the lawn won."

Sorry to have been AWOL for a few weeks. We have been busy bees, though! Two weekends ago, we started making serious progress in the yard and built a garden! Take a look:



Brandon built a frame for our new "square-foot" style veggie garden and we decided where to put it.



Then my sweet husband had to dig out the lawn there. I want you to know, that while he did all the digging, I mowed the entire lawn. And then did some other digging later.

I just wanted you all to know that so you don't think I was sipping lemonaid and working on my tan while he labored.



The next day, I got my hands dirty and put the crops in. We tried to stick with things that, we were assured by our books, would do OK in late summer and fall. So here's what we planted:

• 1 tomato
• 1 eggplant
• 1 summer squash
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 orange bell pepper
• 1 cauliflower
• 2 bush beans
• radishes
• lettuce
• spinach
• shallots
• carrots
• and some marigolds to help keep bugs away

Some of these were transplants, and some were seeds, as you can see. The transplants are mostly thriving; none of the seeds have come up yet.

But even if the seeds don't work, this is a test year. So that's OK.

Then, because our local greenhouse was having a sale, we put in some flowers, too!



These are cosmos that I put in around the base of our bird feeder (the aforementioned digging). We also planted some daisies in the back yard and some sweet william in the beds in the front for some color.

The rest of the weekend was dedicated to pulling weeds. We have so many weeds, you guys. It's just not even funny. We considered going for a "meadow" look and just letting the weeds have their way, but it looks so much nicer when they get pulled out.

And I'm not even talking about dandelions in the lawn, though we definitely have those too. I'm talking about four-foot tall lambs-ear looking things, and stuff with a tap root that I'm tempted to cook up like a carrot. And thistles that sting straight through solid leather gardening gloves. Not to mention this creeping vine stuff with pink flowers that would be nice enough—if it didn't think it needed to take over the world. Honestly. Kudzu has nothing on this stuff. I swear it grows about three feet overnight and if you leave a pile of it lying on the ground, I think it sprouts roots before you can move it.

Thankfully, after about a month of solid pulling and chopping and weed whacking, we've finally made a pretty good dent in all of them. And look what we found in the back corner after we'd cleared out all the thistles and brambles:



More pretty flowers!

This week is going to be dedicated to emptying out the last of the boxes and hanging pictures. Then we'll have a marathon cleaning session and finally a PARTY!

Stay tuned!

P.S. Made a trip out to the compost bin last night and the snake is STILL THERE! I feel like we should name him; he's clearly going to become a part of the family.