Garden at Easter

These first few pictures are of the beds we've had planted for a little while. I think we started the lettuces about a month ago. Some of them we got as plants from home depot but most of them we started from seed. We have some romaine, red leafy, green leafy, swiss chard, kale, spinach and broccoli. This fist picture shows the four trays of plants we are still waiting to plant. We bought a few more strawberries and red cabbage while at the local feed and seed shop buying seed potatoes and more onion sets. We've also got some basil, tomatoes, eggplant and some flowers started in the trays.

Here you can see the red clover that we planted a few months ago in between and around some plants. It should help to add some nutrients to the soil. The garlic was started in November and is looking great.

This year we are taking on some major landscaping in the backyard. We have those four smaller beds that I just showed and we've started a new big bed. Well I shouldn't really say we since Daniel has done most of the work out there. He loves being out moving dirt, stones and mulch. Anyway, he has flattened out a large part of the yard. It was on a slope and now he has leveled it out and built a retaining wall. "We've" mulched around all the beds and some in the new area. This area will be a garden plot that we are waiting a little bit longer to plant in. We will be adding our compost to small areas for plants and using the mulch as walkways.

We had a little help from friends this weekend. We actually got most of this recycled concrete from their driveway. Over a couple of days, Daniel and Hector worked to manually break the concrete and haul it over to our house. Then Daniel had to break it up to smaller shapes to fit into the spaces and make a wall. I was very impressed at his ability to quickly turn a driveway into a beautiful wall. It looks awsomel and once again it was all free.



We had a lot of help from Ellen. She was such a great worker. Anytime she was able to help she was more than willing. She used a hammer and this pickax to get rid of unwanted corners just like her daddy showed her. She wasn't just posing for this. There were many times she was really doing it! She and Arianna (and lots of other friends who have been over here in the last few weeks) have absolutely loved this big dirt pit. They come in filthy every day after digging, chasing, building, and even tumbling in the dirt for hours.

Here you can see how he used his hammer to shape the blocks into pieces that would fit together.

We are creating a walkway inside the bed with the mulch so we can get to our new plants. We are also using it around the beds as a border.


It was a beautiful Easter weekend. We really enjoyed working together as a family in the backyard. We also had a small egg hunt for the girls. The girls loved finding the eggs filled with chocolates and coins. They then hid the eggs for us a few times in the yard. I think they liked hiding them about as much as finding them.