Growing

Why does it take so long to get things the way you want them? I have this glorious vision of how I want my yard to be. We are three years into working our tails off on our yard, and I feel like we have so little to show for it. At least when compared to the final product.

Everything takes too much time and too much money. Our fire pit is still unfinished. As is our chicken coop, our front flower beds, and our shed. Our grass looks like it belongs in the ghetto, it's so uneven, and patchy...it even grows scraggly. The lid to our sandbox has been demolished by children, and needs attention and repair that it isn't getting. The sprinklers have been spraying the back of our house for years, leaving hard water residue on all the windows, but we never seem to be able to get around to adjusting them. And there are plenty of other projects in my mind that haven't even been started yet. It's almost depressing to go outside, because I'm forever mentally going through the list of all that's been left undone.

But today, I want to try and focus on some positive things. Like the fact that we have grass at all. It could be worse, we could still have dirt and weeds, right? And even though none of our trees are big enough to offer shade (and won't be for another 10 years or so), the house next door shades our backyard by about 7:00pm. And I love to go out and sit on the patio in the evening and watch the kids play in the grass.

Another bonus...our peach tree is producing peaches. And they are beautiful. Whoever first said, "Pretty as a peach" had it just right.

Our front yard finally has a few blooming flowers, though not as many as I'd like. But they are pretty, and I'm glad what's there is there.

 My garden got attacked by voles this year, so a lot of our plants didn't make it. But the cucumbers did, and I've been able to make three batches of pickles so far. Two batches of Bread and Butter, and one batch of Garlic Dill. And the plants are still producing. I'm hoping to get to make my Granny Jan's mustard pickles, if my mom can find the recipe.

We planted our grape vines a couple years ago, and this is the first year we've gotten any grapes, and they taste good! (I can't remember if we planted table grapes or juice grapes....hmmm.)

 And I found this little guy while I was out picking tomatoes. I thought it was cool that I got such a great picture of him. I ran in to show it to Adelia, and she was thrilled. (I figured it was safer for the bug to show Adelia his picture rather than him.)