Fun Monday - How does your garden grow?

Yeah, yeah.. I know it's been a week since I posted anything. I've been busy and lazy and when I get to the computer, I either have conversations with my friends Chris or Margaret on FB, play InkBall, or just shut the thing down and go to bed. My mind has been a bit of a blank.

I'm here now and it's time again for FUN MONDAY!!!

Faye's our hostess and she's decided on a proper springtime topic for this week:

I'm asking you to think about gardening. Do you consider yourself a gardener? Or, just the lawn keeper? When you think of your home, is it important that there are growing and flowering plants in your home landscape?

Regardless of where you live--from a city apartment to a farm--do you need to grow something, even if it's a pot of geraniums on the patio? Do you grow your own food or have childhood memories of helping parents or grandparents grow a vegetable garden?

Do you look forward to Saturday morning expeditions to local farmer's markets to buy the first strawberries or asparagus of the season and talk with the local farmers? Are there public gardens that you love to visit? What do you learn from them? Do you think it's important to teach your children and grandchildren about growing beautiful vegetables and flowers?

Oh, man, Faye. When I signed up for this, I told you my post could be the comic relief because I was BORN with a brown thumb.

I have even managed to kill an air plant. I didn't do anything to it. I was just in the same room with it. A lot. And it died.

I would LOVE to be a gardener though. One that didn't kill everything she planted. I do have a house with a yard and I really, really, really want to landscape it with flower beds and vegetable beds... But even here, I've managed to wield the brown thumb:

It was beautiful the first spring we were here. Then came the second...



I suppose the front yard is presentable enough. The grass is green and healthy-looking even though there's dollar weed patches throughout. We have a bed in the front:

And then there's the back. Tall grass, defunct pool (DM promises it's coming out this week), defunct hot tub (I'm actually a little scared to go into that mosquito nursery - they're going to eat me alive!), lots of dog poo (I spared you the visuals), a deck we never use, old pool toys, and in the places where there isn't tall grass... there's no grass at all. In fact, the dogs are creating a little Grand Canyon out there - or maybe a shortcut to China.





Yes. That is an old wheelchair you see in that last picture. My son "rescued" it from a trash heap, brought it home, played with it all of 10 minutes, then promptly forgot it. I think I might try to sneak it out to the trash pile next Thursday.

It is rather depressing actually.

However, if you know me, you know that I see this as a CHALLENGE. I've got PLANS. When that pool comes out? Sod. Raised vegetable garden. Blueberry bushes. Pruned azaleas. The hottub/mosquito nursery is gonna come out too. We'll try to salvage the building so ZBoy can have a "tree house" since there are no appropriate trees around. The unused deck? Most of it will come out and a small fish pond and water garden will be added (with a fence to keep the dogs out of it.

The front yard is more easily remedied. Clean up the front bed. Make it mostly succulents and grasses and get rid of the stuff that's not. I'd like to pull out the boxwood hedge across the front and make a rose bed in front of the porch. I have always wanted to grow roses and now that there's such a thing as a knockout rose, I might just realize my dream.

And now you know what I'm going to be working on this summer! Along with Z's bathroom and maybe the kitchen.

My eyes are always bigger than my stomach.