My First Garden

After doing so much reading and research on living a more simple life and what we can do to be more self sufficient, I decided I wanted to try and grow my own salad veggies. This is a picture of my little cherry tomatoes and they are quite prolific! We are growing them in pots because the soil in this area is mostly rock and clay and not the ideal conditions for a good garden.

There are some areas I may try to use next year for an in the ground garden. So far this year we are growing cukes, cherry tomatoes, tree tomatoes, bell peppers, and green beans. I also decided to try my hand at strawberries...and it succeded. At first it produced a few berries and they were swiped by something...squirrel, birds, nosey cat, I am not sure what. But now the bush has expanded in leaves and runners and is blooming more now than ever before. I love strawberries..they are by far my most favorite fruit.

So if I had a chance to redo what I planted this year, I would definitely add more of each thing. I was kinda shy about what I planted. You know, the whole What-if-it-all-dies-thinking? I did not want to be out to much money in case it did not do well. We tried the start from seed method and everything grew really well at first and then as soon as I tried to transplant them outdoors, they all died. Go figure. So I went to Lowe's and Home Depot and bought starter plants. Not doing to bad for a first timer.

Ms. Tippy

Meet Ms. Tippy, everyone! She has got to be the nosiest cat in the country! She is the "boss" around my house. I am sure there are alot of you that feel the same way about your pets. She follows me around the yard when I am playing in my flower bed or just sitting on my swing.

My cat chats with me. Yes, she does~ I can ask her something and she will "respond" with a meow that is like a low growl when she doesn't like what I say. My husband thinks it is the funniest thing. Any of your cats chat with you?

This is the swing my dear hubby bought me on my birthday 2 years ago. I love it! It was handmade for me by a friend my hubby works with and if you look to the left, you can see the man even added cup holders for me. On the top of the swing is two hooks to hold hanging baskets of flowers. I spend alot of time out here, especially when the weather is cool like the past two days. It only reached the middle 70's here in the SE of US and that is unheard of for July. Normally when you walk out the door at 8am you are drenched in sweat within 5 minutes. So, I took the day to just relax and swing and read.

As you can see, I was accompanied with two of my favorite things....books and coffee. The blue jacket you see on the swing is my old favorite and if you maybe look close, you can see the coffee stains on it and the zipper pull is gone so I improvise and use a safety pin to pull it up with. This would be the one I refer to on the front of my blog about not being able to part with a favorite sweater. ;)

Well, I went out to look at my cukes this morning and I am not sure they will survive the storm damage we had last week. They are looking mighty puny... Any suggestions?

Soul Food

There are few things in life that really minister to our souls and for women I would say that one of them is flowers. They just seem to bring such peace and calm to me. There is such beauty in flowers!

I went outside this morning to survey the damage after last night's thunderstorms ripped through our area, and found that lots of my petunias that I had spent so much time planting this year had barely survived...but they did! Isn't God so good! I went over and touched them and said a quick prayer for revival for them.