Gardening Getting Into Full Swing

I just snapped these photos really quick since I was more concerned with washing all the mud off me so they're not that great. Let's just say we have some drainage issues to deal with in the yard. But I wanted to show off how much our yard has changed in the past six months.

As a point of reference, here was the house back when it had a million boxwoods from hell:

With the boxwoods gone, I planted blueberry bushes and bulbs on the left side of the house:

The bulbs went a little cray cray so I'm going to have work to do in the fall making them more manageable. Some of those bulbs are garlic so they'd be getting harvested anyway. The rest I'm not so sure what to do with.

On the right side of the house are our raised beds of glory:

We're really proud of how these turned out considering a guy down the street from us used the same stones for a raised area in his yard and it looks like total crap. It took a lot of blood, swear, tears, trips to Home Depot, and swearing to get the foundation level and everything in place. I'm sure our little Subaru hates us right now but it's been earning its keep. In the fall we're going to finish these up with capstones and make a final raised bed that will go to the sidewalk.

Yay herbs! Where you see the markers I threw in some heirloom tomato and pepper seeds. I had started most of these seeds indoors and not a single one sprouted. Not. One. I would say I just fail at starting seeds except other seeds I started indoors sprouted just fine. Clearly these heirloom vegetables are lazy bums. So either these will grow outside and the seeds weren't a complete waste of time (and money) or they don't and I can just throw something else in those sections.

I'm debating what to put in the lower raised bed. I'm thinking maybe asparagus in part of it but I'm not sure. Maybe this year I'll just do some squash and melons in it while I give myself time to think about what to use it for. And by maybe I'll do some squash and melons I mean maybe the squash borers will eat everything and make me hate growing squash once again.

And David put together this rain barrel today. Too bad we didn't have it for all the rain we've been getting the past week! You can also see some of my monster garlic, sunflowers, and more peas.

And for fun, here is a picture taken almost exactly a month ago.

It's amazing we've gone from snow to summer weather in 30 days.