After looking at the photos of your new garden, I have become wistful for the days when I lived in the Birchwood Neighborhood. Just like you, we were young, it was early in our marriage, and we had our little daughter Lily.

The soil in the neighborhood was fabulous and the backyard beckoned me to garden!

I did the same as you guys, I tilled the soil, and readied the garden for planting. Thus began my love affair with the earth in my backyard and years of creative outlet in the garden. (Not to mention the organic bounty it provided for our table!) I feel WONDERFUL that Lily was grown on fruits and veggies that were lovingly raised in our backyard (not to mention, fertilizer and pesticide FREE!).

I also learned so much about my faith as I spent time in the garden. There are so many analogies to faith in the garden…and lots of time for meditation and prayer while you tend to it.

As a “Happy New Garden” gift, I will share with you a few tips from the decade I spent in my garden – about 1/2 mile from where yours is now:

1. Make sure to remove every scrap of the grass roots that are in your newly tilled bed. They come back like beasts and are super hard to get out later.
2. Buy a bag of ladybugs from the Farmer’s Co-op. They will eat the aphids. (The larvae look like little dragons and they eat WAY more aphids than the adults. They are creepy looking, but super advantageous for your garden!)
3. Plant Nasturtiams as a border. They bloom all summer into fall. They are edible (peppery), colorful, bring in lots of bees to pollinate, are GREAT in salads and as garnish and their buds are similar to capers. They also will self-seed the next year.
4. Build a big “pea tee-pee” and/or “bean tee-pee” out of bamboo or branches. As the vines climb and fill it in it will create a wonderful play space for Baron where he will be kept busy as you tend to the garden. (Lily LOVED hers and spent hours upon hours playing in it and sampling the bounty!)
5. Put down Rye seed in the fall over the whole garden. It will keep the weeds down until you till in the spring and will provide a wonderful base of natural nitrogen to grow the next season’s crops.
6. Pumpkins, squash and zucchini ALWAYS get WAY BIGGER than you ever imagined they would…so leave them lots of room to GROW!
7. To grow a monster pumpkin…pick one on the vine to allow to grow. Pinch-off all of the other buds and starts. In the middle of the summer, slit the vine where it touches ground closest to the fruit and put a dish of milk under it. I know…MILK??! It is a tip from one of my former neighbors who was 80+ years old and grew up on a farm in Iowa…it worked!
8. ENJOY EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

I liked to your blog from Orangette and was instantly drawn to your beautiful photography and the “Bellingham” tag on all your posts. I’m from b’ham! Right now I’m studying art in Texas (and searching for the different type of beauty to be found here).

I’ll keep coming back to your blog. I love it!

….he was telling me about how he didn’t know about that for the longest time (i wouldn’t have known either). anyways, its coming together. i’m excited to bring jacqi up sometime and show her – she still hasn’t seen your place.