Sunday, March 6, 2011

Garden beds and tee pee's

While I was at Goodwill searching for pottery plates I stumbled upon these little guys.  They are handmade from my favorite type of pottery and best part was they cost me only 99 cents each.  They do make a cute couple don't they? These will be my garden buddies. Love this.


It was a crazy day for me today.  While I took my daughter to her soccer game my husband built me some garden beds. Last year I had just rows of soil and I had to battle slugs the entire growing season.
We were going to make these from cedar but cedar has gone up in price and would of been super expensive to make them.  So we decided to make them out of fir instead.  $388 or $200? Yeah I think I will take the $200 option. But now that they are made of fir we have to decide what to paint them with. Oil them up or paint them a color. I think I will be painting them some vibrant colors to spice my garden up. My next challenge is finding non toxic paint I can use for outside and what colors to choose. A work in progress....

When I finally did get home I went right to work on  my tee pee.  I decided to put it there because I didn't want to block the living room tall window and my daughters bedroom window.  Along this wall of our house will soon be cattle fencing hung from the gutters and I will be planting runner beans and pea's. This should shade our wall and keep my house much cooler during the summer.  My hammock will be staying right where it is and I can lay on it and read my book while the girls play in the back yard.  


As you can see I did a simple tee pee.  I was too lazy to get directions so I just sorta fumbled my way through it.  I took 4 bamboo poles ( free from my Grandma's place) and one roll of cotton string I found at the dollar store.  I simply wrapped the string around it at the top and then around the poles slowly going down to the ground level.  I left the front open so my girls can go inside and play. I can't wait till they can do that.  I added dirt to the bottom around the base and will be adding some organic bark inside so the kids won't have to play on the dirt floor.  I then planted runner pea's all along the bottom just under the string and bush beans on the outer rim of the dirt.  Should turn out pretty cool.  

Soon this greenhouse will be completely filled with starts. I need to get all my garden items out of there this week and get to work on more starts.  Today it was 65 degrees in there and felt like summer compared to outside. I can only imagine how hot it will be in there later in the growing season.  I plan on being there a lot so if I don't answer my phone you know where to go.
My lilac tree in my front side yard didn't bloom last year for some reason.  Either its skipping a year or dying. Not sure whether I am keeping it or not. As you can see it has buds so it is alive. Maybe....


Not sure if you can see him or not but on the tip top of this tree is Mr.Hummingbird.  Each time I go outside in the front he talks to me.  Well today while I was doing my yard work he decided to hang out in my neighbors tree.  I think he was giving me pointers on what to do.  Or telling me what I was doing wrong. It's kinda nice having a friend hang out with me.  

And to end things off here is a picture of one of my bulbs that finally decided to bloom.  Can't wait for my mom to come by and see all my flowers because her favorite color is yellow. 

2 comments:

Lynda said...

Your tee pee is great! And I love your garden couple. My husband is always putting a little *something*
out in the garden to surprise me...
usually it's cow or flamingo related! Your garden will be lovely this year...I would give my eye teeth for a greenhouse: you are one lucky gal.

Surviving and thriving on pennies said...

I have been wanting my own for several years now. Luckily I had a friend selling one so I picked it up for only $200. This year my garden will be HUGE and I can't wait!