The Garden Salad Days

Garden progress! The weather was absolutely uh-mazing this past weekend and we've spent the last three days outside. It's been a while since we've truly felt like we could start something in terms of an outdoor living space. The last two houses were temporary dwellings and we decided not to spend too much energy, or money for that matter, trying to make permanent outdoor features. I can be very impatient and I can easily forget that the garden sanctuary we had in Atlanta took a couple of years of hard work and we had certain advantages, such as no real yard maintenance. I do love container gardens! We moved into this house a little late in the season to really start planting. Top that off with the hottest summer on record and we pretty much hid indoors.

Ok, back to what we've done so far. Our old pond form has been in the garage since we left Atlanta. Today it is comfortably setting in it's new digs. I even have a little animated gif behind the jump of the digging process.



If you click through to the hosted photo on Flickr you can see a few notes I've set up to explain the next phase of work to be done in this section. We're undecided where the second pagoda is going to live. A little history of those two - mom bought them for the front gate of the old family house. When Michael and I moved everything out two years ago, they came with us. Stacey got a great shot of one during the wedding.



We bought 50 x 16" pavers. It took two trips to Lowes to bring these home. We actually need more! We got our workout for the day loading and unloading them. The beers definitely made things a little 'easier' these last few days.;)



This is the very temporary pad. We were desperate for a patio fix and to be able to kick back with some adult beverages and watch the clouds roll on by. When we actually lay the pavers for good they'll have an inch or two in between for moss, herbs and other creeping ground cover. We're about twenty squares short of our {my} desired patio size, but even just two more rows will be nice. The lounge chairs were purchased for our wedding. They were on sale for $25.00 at Target! We considered selling them before our move last year and now I'm glad we kept them. The second pond setup will go in front of the chimney, which is in the left of the photo.



It's a good thing I don't try to keep my nails well manicured. I honestly do not like wearing gloves while playing in the dirt. It's just so therapeutic to feel it, and even caked on my hands.

I'll continue to post progress photos.

I may go back and re-edit it at some point, we just wanted to get something up.