Embracing my inner gardener

This spring marks the first time in my 28 (yes, 28) years where I have become obsessed with flowers and gardening. I'm not exactly sure what clicked with me.

I think I've always mildly enjoyed flowers and gardening and everything that goes along with it. Most of my attempts have been a lot of trial and error. Mostly the latter, I'm sad to report. And then came the magic ingredient....weed barrier and bark dust. I completely underestimated the importance of those two things in the garden! They have completely changed the landscape of our front yard. Now our flower beds in the front are able to retain moisture which is of course a key thing when trying to grow flowers or anything else for that matter.

This month we will have owned our house for 3 years. Here are some pictures of what our house looked like three years ago when we bought it:


Okay, so they're not the greatest pictures and I can't get the layout to do what I want, so it kind of looks out of place and funny. Anyway, here is a picture of what our house looks like today:



As you can see, there have been some improvements over the years! I remember the former owner telling us that it was impossible to get grass to grow in the front...but check us out! It's not the prettiest grass in the world, but as long as you stay at a distance, it's not bad. I have a grandma who's backyard is literally a paradise. As long as I can remember, she has always had a beautiful garden and she works hard at it. I have always enjoyed the results of someone's labor in the garden, but I've never (before now) enjoyed the process. Here is my very first "baby" garden...it doesn't look like too much in this picture, but once the bulbs come up, it's gorgeous. This is the first garden I've ever made from scratch. When we moved in, it was literally weed barrier and river rocks.



When I was growing up, I had 3 full sets of grandparents. Each of my parents had their whole set and I also had a whole set of great-grandparents. The aforementioned grandma (my mom's mom) with the great garden lives in Idaho, so we only saw her once a year or so. My other grandma (dad's mom) lived in Boring, so we saw them more often. A few months ago my grandpa died (dad's dad) and for some reason, I have felt the strongest connection with him and my grandma since then. I keep thinking about them and having dreams about them and their house all the time. I don't know what's up with that! Anyway, my dad's mom wasn't really the gardener that my mom's mom is, but she had hummingbirds. I remember sitting on her patio and watching the hummingbirds come to her feeders. I remember helping her take them down and make the sugar solution and refill the feeders. It was magical. I have always loved hummingbirds because of this. But over the years I have forgotten. Until this year. I don't know where it came from, but out of the blue, I decided I wanted hummingbird feeders. I checked online and thought that I maybe had missed their migration because I didn't have feeders out before they came. I was so bummed. But God sent me a hummingbird! I saw one even before I had the feeders out. I bought and hung feeders that same day and now we see them often. Isn't God great? So, now I have found that I have a little bit of both my grandmas in me. I'm looking forward to seeing and exploring more and more of my heritage. Here is a picture of our backyard where the hummingbird feeders are, although I can't remember if you can actually see them or not.



Yeah, you can see one of the feeders at the top of the pic.

On another note, speaking of gardening, for my birthday the boys went shopping for me and picked out some flower seeds for me. Since I didn't really have a place to plant them, I decided that for mother's day I needed a window box in front of our house. So that's what I got. Josh spent Monday night building me this window box and I spend Tuesday painting it. Monday night I planted all my seeds and I'm bursting with anticipation for them to come up. I'll post another picture when they do! But isn't my window box cute?