There's no turning back now...

The plants are in the ground! We worked our asses off all. day. long. We started at 10AM and didn't come inside till 5:30PM. I don't even recall stopping to pee! For real! I know you are probably looking at the picture and thinking, that little thing took all day?!? Well, let me explain. I wish I took some before pictures. Basically this is a raised bed next to our driveway. It was like this when we bought the house. This is the only side of the house that gets full sun. We figured rather than dig up our lawn (that Kevin has worked very hard on every year) and then having the garden possibly fail since we are new at this, we figured we would use this raised section. We always planned on just doing a small garden anyway. But this area was filled with multiple layers of mulch, which we had to clean out first. Then we had to dig up weeds. All of that took a while. Then we started laying the new soil in there and quickly found out we way underestimated the amount of soil we would need for our little garden. So we did have to take a break to go back to Lowe's for many many many more bags of soil. It was OK, though, because we got iced coffees, too! Priorities, ya know!

~* Kristen & Kevin's First Garden, est. 5/24/09 *~

So we got back with our soil and Kevin continued laying that out and getting it just so while I started potting the herbs. When he was ready I left the herbs for a bit and we got planting, according to my very sophisticated diagram....which I proceeded to scribble things off of and re-write things as we planted each row. In the end, what we ended up with, from right to left, is:

Row 1: Roma tomatoes and cherry tomatoes

Row 2: Better Boy tomatoes and yellow peppers

Row 3: Two banana pepper plants and one green pepper plant

Row 4: One green pepper plant and two red pepper plants

(oh yeah, did I mention that as we were working the soil my parents pulled in with EIGHT red and green pepper plants! 8!!! Apparently everyone thinks we are master gardeners. I kept two of each color and told them to stick the others in pots at home! I love my parents!)

Row 5: Two cucumber plants

Row 6: Zucchini

Row 7: Butternut squash

The large pots you see just beyond the garden hold a strawberry plant, blueberry plant, and my little pumpkin plant. I don't know what will happen with these but I followed the directions on the tags to the letter and they did say they could be planted in large containers.

Ahhh...dirt! Aren't my little garden gloves so cute?! I have had those for years...they actually have a couple holes in them. Which would explain why I am still scraping dirt out from under my fingernails despite taking a very long shower, but I love my little gloves. I got them at the Christmas Tree Shop, super cheap, and have never found another pair that I like as much as these. So many of the gloves the garden centers sell are so heavy and...ugly.

My parents also brought us over three hanging impatiens pots. My parents rock! I was going to go get these tomorrow but they grabbed them for us while they were buying us all the red and green peppers they could find!

Here is my little herb garden! I still have to work on the arrangement of the pots. Not liking it right now. And there are a few more herbs I want to get. Right now those pots hold basil, Greek oregano, thyme, sage, and flat leaf parsley. They smell AMAZING!!!

Greek oregano. So. flippin. good. Smells heavenly!!!

Parsley...another fave. Yes this pot needs some more soil.

And then, there is us. We made it through this long day relatively unscathed and with our marriage still intact. We may be dirty. We may be smelly. We may be exhausted......

But we are still smiling!

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On the agenda for tomorrow, we still have flowers to plant. And I need to get crafty and make some super cute garden signs and little stakes to mark what is what. Then next weekend will bring still more yard work. But it's all good. It's all good!