Garden Girl

I was so excited to see that our cilantro plants from last year reseeded and sprouted new cilantro plants.  They actually grew throughout the winter months and got HUGE.  Today I finally went outside, pruned it back, and harvested a TON of cilantro.  My Easter gift to friends and family will be cilantro. Ha!  I also cut some lavender to decorate our counters in the house. The purple blooms are so beautiful right now!

TJ let me have this broken "First Act" drum head to use as a planter.  I think it will be so cool to have pretty flowers blooming in this.  But, until then, it worked great to hold my cilantro. :-)

DIY Water Can

Recently I saw a great thing on Pinterest (I know, hard to believe. lol).  It was a recycled watering can from a milk jug.  Well, I decided to try it using a Polar Seltzer water bottle.  I figured this size would be perfect to water my flowers on the front porch.  I nailed quite a few hold into the bottle top and voila!, a watering bottle.  What makes it even better is that we use rain water to water our plants! 

So cool, huh?

This is my favorite time of year.  The warmth of the sun on my face, everything blooming and becoming beautiful, and feeling the breeze in the air.

Garden State

I really just felt like titling this post "Garden State" and then including a great photo from the movie. :-)

This afternoon, after getting some work done, I decided to venture outside to pot the beautiful flowers that we purchased yesterday.  I'd been itching to pot some colorful blooms and make our front porch look pretty again this Spring.  The weather was just perfect today with the sun shining and the cool breezes.  I had so much fun getting my hands dirty.  It was even more fun to see my finished products.  I potted plenty of flowers to be able to put some in front and on the back porch. 

Love the colors!

Mmmm.

I wonder if birds will come back and lay eggs this year?

So pretty!

I can't wait to watch them grow and bloom!

And this is what I looked like afterwards. LOL. 

Either this Fall or next Spring, I hope to make a garden bed in our front yard too.  This summer we will be very busy with photography, so we won't have much time to garden.  However I am already dreaming for later this year.  For now I will enjoy my beautiful potted plants and watch them bloom even more.  Actually, before I make you think that all we had time for this year was flowers, let me mention that TJ has had a Spring garden of lettuce.  It's wonderful to walk outside and pick your salad.  Mmmm.  I will post some photos of our lettuce garden later on.  

Have a wonderful Thursday!

Thunderstorms and Garden Progress

Wow, so tonight we were watching a movie when the craziest storm of the year arrived!  We had been having lightening throughout the night, but then the heavens opened up.  I quickly became worried about my two hanging flowers pots on our porch because they are both housing bird nests.  One has baby birds, and the other has 3 eggs.  The planters were swinging so much with the wind and all I could imagine was waking up in the morning to something not so pretty. :-(  So, we took each planter down and placed a crate over the top of it.  Then we made sure everything else around our yard was ok.  The sunflowers were still secured to our deck from the other night when we had a storm.  The rain was coming from every directions, there was quarter sized hail, and winds that were so strong.  Zoe, does not like loud storms either and does not hide the fact that she doesn't. ha!  It has now calmed down and our flowers are hanging back up so that the momma and papa birds can protect their nests again.

I thought I would also share some of our most recent garden photos.  Everything is coming along great and the sunflowers are doubling by the week.  Enjoy!

 They should be blooming any day now!

Corn!

 Cucumbers are taking over!

Roma Tomatoes

 1st of the season!

 Our farm dog!

Our herb garden.

Flower Pottin'

First Off, Don't forget to enter for a chance to win the lovely bowl giveaway!  Click here to enter. Winner announced tomorrow morning.
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Yesterday was one of my favorite days.  I planted lots of pretty flowers in pots for my deck.  I am creating a nice little spot for us to enjoy the outdoors and relax!

It's so funny how doing yard work, gardening, and weeding were definitely not on my "love" lists growing up.  It felt like a chore and i would have much rather been indoors doing something else creative.  Now that  TJ and I have started gardening, I'm LOVING it!  We were first focused on vegetables and fruits, but yesterday we purchased quite a few flower plans and herbs and I spent the day potting them.  It was so much fun and even better to see them all pretty on our deck.  I like to sit out there in the mornings and eat breakfast now. I've been here 2 years and I have never done this.  It's definitely a new season for me. :-)

I am going to start looking for some patio chairs and an umbrella for our table.  I keep looking on craigslist for that "golden" find!  If you have any leads on some nice chairs and/or an umbrella and base, let me know!

Anyway, here are some iphone photos I took yesterday after I planted my flowers.  I will get out there and take some better photos soon.

Everything we got at Lowes & Sugar Creek Garden Center

Impatiens

Begonias

Iceland Poppy's.  I call it my ET plant. haha.

Here is the Iceland Poppy in bloom.  I was so excited to see it had blossomed over night!

Petunias

Coffee Mug Begonias

Rosemary

Cilantro

As mentioned above, we went to Lowes & Sugar Creek Garden Center yesterday.  We had the BEST customer service at both places.  There was a master gardener at Lowes who was so helpful with information about our garden.  She even gave us a website for the York County Master Gardeners.  She said we can get info from the website as well as call them for help and advice throughout the week.  Here is the website, York Master Gardeners.  Because we were looking for something organic and safe to kill some maggots that killed our green beans (blog post on this to come...boo!), she referred us to the Sugar Creek Garden Center down the road.  Wow, it was so much fun and he employees were great.  We found what we needed and got some herbs as well.  I highly recommend this garden center!

Anyway, that was my gardening day yesterday.  I'm sorry it has been over a week since I had posted.  We have been so into the gardening and making Garden Center runs..ha!