First day or Spring Break

After months of teaching a nice week at home with little plans is so appreciated! I took my time today to begin planning out my vegetable, herb and flower gardens. Brandon and I have re-done (at least touched) every room in our house and now we want to take the focus to the outside. We've done a little to it but mostly just maintenance. With our new eating habits, we use a lot of herbs and eat a ton of fruits and veggies so we decided that we have enough space in our back yard, why not build a garden. This is a huge task but one that we both feel we could accomplish. I have been composting since we moved in, we have nurtured several roses, trees and plants back to life in our previous un-kept yard, we feel like we can handle it.
In order to get have a proper garden, I took some pages from my parents and decided to get Brandon to make me a raised garden beds. While the box is easy to build, filling it is a little bit more difficult when you are on your own. So my day looked like this:

my future meals!

1. Clearing weeds and leveling the ground in the garden.
2. Drawing out and researching veggies, herbs and fruits Northern Virginia can grow and the seasons to plant.
3. Getting a truck load of dirt from the local nursery.
4. Shoveling out the truck load of dirt by myself (my poor back)! 
5. Lining the 16ft x 6 ft box with newspaper (on a windy day- eeek)
6. Piling screened top soil  on top of the newspaper.
7. Break time for a pedicure with my friend Margaret
8. Back home to eat some sweet potato chips, drink some water, a couple strawberries and back to work!
9. Finished leveling the dirt and then I added  a layer or leaves. (This acts as a natural compost layer like hay or straw)
10. Started adding a layer of compost from my very own compost pile. I have been composting for 3 years and it  paid off today. I have the most beautiful dark soil full of worms! Big fat worms. It is so healthy and I can't wait to see how my veggies grow in this stuff. I never thought I would be so excited about worms (Gross) but this saves a lot of money and it make me feel good that I was able to make great compost (another wonderful thing my mom and dad taught me!) 
11. My back was getting sore so I decided to stop working on my garden so I didn't get rushed and do it improperly. 
12. I cleaned up all of the supplies in the back yard and finished black paper lining under the maple tree and fixing up the rock barrier. Filled it with dirt and it is finished! 
13. I weeded my current flower beds and chatted with a neighbor about swapping some plants :)                                                                                                           

When we first bought the house

Brandon built a box

Newspaper layer

Dirt layer and then a leaf layer

Look at that compost!! Wish the worms showed up in pictures

While I was working in the yard I was able to meet some new neighbors, chat with some that I had already known, share my work with some of them and hear a great story about paying it forward. So happy to be where I am and I am thrilled with the progress of my first day on spring break. Now it is time for my hot pink toes to take a rest and eat some dinner!