Spring Garden Fever

 Currently, this is what the outside of the house looks like.

And yet, despite, or perhaps, because of it, 

I have a serious case of Spring Fever.

 I'm anxious to start all my outdoor projects, 

most of which are gardening/plant related.

Gardening is my big stress reliever,

and it's been many years since I've had flower gardens

(or potential ones rather)

of my very own.

The digging and planting, the design and enjoying sitting out on the patio

all make me feel relaxed.

And trust me, I need all the stress relief and relaxation I can get.

So now I'm using the last of the winter

to plan out the gardens.

I'm planning things like brick paver patios,

water gardens and flower bed design.

I've also looked into making the property a Monarch Waystation

and having the yard be a National Wildlife Federation certified Wildlife Habitat.

(I encourage others to look into these as well, no matter where you live!

Especially the Monarch Waystation, Monarch Butterflies are declining rapidly and need help!)

I'm also working on a plan for some added curb appeal-

something the house is in desperate need of!

The steps to what was the upstairs apartment will be removed

once we replace the door with a new window.

The front of the concrete porch I plan to spruce up with stone veneer,

and eventually replacing the ugly iron columns and railings with nice white ones.

I also think I'm going to get 3 large containers and plant an evergreen shrub in each one

for the front of the house on the sidewalk.  

Without a front lawn, the house needs something to soften it up.

I'm also thinking about a planting box on the right end of the porch 

so I can plant some type of climbing plant to grow up that side.

I'm thinking perhaps cardinal vine as it's an annual,

has bright red flowers that will attract hummingbirds and match the front door.

When the columns and railings get replaced, I can plan something more permanent.

And I suspect I'll be butting heads with my husband over design ideas.

I have it in my head to have a cottage garden

with English roses spilling over white picket fences

and climbing arbors 

(which will be featured to the right of the house towards the back yard some),

and I'm thinking he's more of the organized plants in a line sort of fellow.

Really, if that's the case, he should just plan to give in now. 

For now, this is the reality of the yard,

and I've been told I can't rip out shrubs until the ground isn't frozen or too muddy.

Guess we'll see about that.

Prepping the Garden

The husband was hard at work Sunday and Monday

getting the veggie garden ready for planting.

This past fall we dumped quite a bit of composted manure

onto the garden- something we neglected to do the year before

and we paid for it in lack of production.

So Big E went to work tilling in the compost.

He also went to work making the edges perfectly straight.

Finally, he limed the garden good.

We have one more bag of lime we need to finish up one corner

but for the most part, it's done.

 I spent my evening making a to scale drawing of the garden

so I could get an idea of where I wanted things to go.

We wanted to make sure we rotated the various veggies

in the hopes that it would help with squash bug issues

and that rotation and added compost would boost our crops.

I paid special attention to companion planting 

and spacing (something I never really paid much attention to).

I ended up having a little extra room for a small herb garden-

on paper at least.

We'll see how well I planned once it's time to get the seeds and plants in the ground.