We've got Green Thumbs!

Inspired by many, I decided that we should grow our own garden this year.  It has been a really fun project and the kids love it almost as much as I have come to love it!  I'm a complete rookie at it, but hopefully we'll get a bit of production from this years' plants.  I was originally concerned with remembering to water the plants each day, but they get quite a bit from our sprinkler system and I have my Ellie reminder... Ellie remembers everything...  Plus, the kids and I venture out every morning and look at all our plants together

to see what changes have taken place each day.  It's been wonderful to be able to show our kids how tending to and working on something can produce something useful.  It's a good lesson about the importance of taking care of something... you know, in addition to that dog we bought! :)

The above picture was taken Easter weekend shortly after we planted.  We planted about half already started plants and about half seeds.  As you can see from the below pictures, they've both done well in just 2/3 
weeks!

We planted quite a few things.  As mentioned before, I am a rookie so I wasn't too sure what spacing I should do with the seeds and plants.  From the bottom of the screen on the left up we have pumpkins, a row of herbs, carrots, broccoli, 2 rows of peas, corn, canteloupe, watermelon, raspberries and grapes.  The second picture from the bottom up are several varieties of tomatoes, peppers, squash, zuchini, eggplants, corn.  So, things will probably get crowded quickly.  Our next phase of gardening work to be done is making another bed along the back fence in our yard where we will transplant some of the larger plants like the pumpkins, watermelons, corn, and probably our ichiban eggplant.

We have lots of our vegetable plants flowering and we've even got some tomatoes growing.

Ever since I went to Daniel's grandparents house and they had several fruit trees in their backyard, I've been dreaming about my own backyard fruit trees.  I've dreamed of my children out harvesting all the fruit from the trees, collecting them in woven baskets.  I've dreamed of the children and I together in the kitchen together working to can all the fruit for our food storage.... all while the angels are singing praises from the heavens... Well, it's a dream, not exactly my reality.  Anyway, the dream was semi-crushed when I realized that we have a huge concrete slab underneath our entire yard.  Our actual yard dirt is only about 4-6 inches deep, not exactly suitable for tree growth.  So, after considering my options (like returning the trees, pawning them off to parents or giving them to friends) I discovered that we could grow them in large pots.  Sure this may not last us more than 3-5 years, but it is our now solution and all we've got at this point.  So, we'll see how they do!

Here is a closeup of our peach tree.  We've already got several peaches growing so that has been very exciting to see!

This is a closeup of the orange tree.  It is the smallest of the 3 at this point and I wonder how fast it will grow.  Daniel says that those green circles underneath the flowers are actually oranges, but I'm not sure they aren't just little buds or something.  We'll see, I hope my orange tree fruit comes to fruition.  Get it, FRUITION!  I am hilarious.

This is our lemon tree.  Oh lemon tree, I love you already!  Do you see that big ol' lemon growing already!?  Awesome.  And there are more little ones coming up behind it!  It is growing quickly already and that makes me happy as I hope its growth will reach all the way over to cover up that hideous utility box we have in the corner of our yard.  From what I've read, citrus trees grow well here in Texas, so I hope that's true.

Here are some of our strawberries.  We originally planted them in the bed with the rest of our plants but they didn't seem to be doing very well, so we moved them.  When we first got this plant it gave us a couple strawberries, but I haven't seen anything growing on it in awhile, so we will just have to watch and see what it does.

This is our newest addition... the TOPSY TURVY!  I've heard mixed reviews about it, but I just filled it up with strawberry plants this weekend so we will see how it grows... I already see improvements in the way the plants look since being put in the topsy turvy, so this might be a good buy after all.

Finally, these are just flowers that the kids and I planted together.  Well, we did it all together, but they got complete freedom to plant these how they wished.  I think our front yard could use more color, but I don't want to buy anymore flowers.  So, we are growing our own flowers!  Hopefully these turn out nice and strong enough to use in our front flower beds this year.

Well, there you have it!  Never thought I would be a gardener but I'm loving it and it is a good use of our backyard which isn't completely functional or safe for our kids to play in alone anyway.  I'm sure we'll update pictures in a few weeks to show you how we're doing as first time gardeners and certainly when we eat our first fruits of our labor!