Our Vegetable Garden: Part 4

Everything is growing! These photos were taken 2 weeks after the first planting. 

Look at these babies grow!

Broccoli from seed.

Spinach from seed. Can you see the row sprouting?

We just put some pepper plants in the ground.

Check out the zucchini and yellow squash (also from plants)! They are more than double the size they were when we planted them.

We also planted 2 rows of carrot seeds, 3 rows of sweet onion bulbs, and 7 potato tubers at the end of the above bed. Once they start sprouting I'll show progress.

Eric + Sara | Maternity

Today I got the pleasure of photographing Sara and Eric. They were great! Sara just glowed the entire time and Eric's a hoot. Baby Owen will be here soon! Enjoy.

That one's for you Eric. ;)

Our Vegetable Garden: Part 3

Then we planted colorful marigolds along the perimeter of the garden beds. This should help prevent certain bugs and bunnies from eating our plants. They don't like the smell so they stay away.

We also went ahead and bought some tomatoes and planted those. We have 4 roma plants and 1 mr. stripey Jonathan got as a birthday present from the Coopers. We'll see how they do!

In addition we planted 4 zucchini and 4 yellow squash plants. Usually you plant these later in the year, closer to the end of spring time, but it's been so hot we think they'll do ok. We're pretty excited!

Camping

As soon as we finished our garden beds, we rode up to Chilhowee Campground above Parksville Lake (Lake Ocoee). Lots of camping happened in April. Two weekends in a row actually. First one was for Jonathan's birthday, second for a church campout. The weather has just been beautiful. Also, we went on quite an epic mountain biking adventure following our first camping night. We went 8 or so miles which wasn't too outrageous, but it was straight up and down, and then Jonathan's tire blew out half way. We happened to be right next to a grassy field and proceeded to stuff the tire full of grass. There's video of it, I'll post it once Jonathan uploads it. It's quite hilarious and inventive. :)

Weekend 1

Complete with all the fixin's. 

Salt and vinegar kettle chips, marshmallows, sarsaparilla soda (oh my, if you've never tried it, go to World Market right now), big franks, sauerkraut, and strawberries to add to your smores'. Trust me, it's delicious. Bess has so many brilliant ideas. :)

Jonny making fire.

Bess' dog, Etta. She's a good camper.

The view from up top. Parksville Lake at the bottom.

I really do love Tennessee. It's perfect.

His sweet film SLR.

Big Necklaces

It's something I'm enjoying right now. Particularly these.

via Kristina Klarin's spring collection

Our Vegetable Garden: Part 2

Two days after building the beds, we started planting seeds. Here we planted 2 rows of broccoli, 2 rows of salad bowl lettuce, and 2 rows of a mesclun mix of lettuces. We're not sure how the lettuces will do since it got hot so quick. Looks like we kind of skipped spring weather this year.

Ninety-nine red balloons go by

This is neato! What a brilliant save the date.

found via bluepoolroad

Girl with Glasses

Ah! This is sweet! I want to go do this riiiiight now.

Images by Angela Kohler...check out her website. She does some beautiful photography. See her blog too for inspiration.

:) 

Our Vegetable Garden: Part 1

At the beginning of April, Jonathan and I took a day to build two 4x20 ft raised beds in the backyard. Jonathan mowed down a section of the backyard and we called a couple friends to help us shovel 3 tons of dirt. It was quite an adventure, but well worth it! We counted 24 man-hours from start to finish. 

Here's the documentation:

Before

Mowing down the backyard.

Cutting the boards.

Laying down the plan.

Drilling the boards.

Shoveling the mushroom compost. 

One word: stinky!

After!

The hard workers! 

Guian, Jonathan and Monika. 

Danny and David had to leave half way through to go to class. Thanks guys for all your help!

The end.

Jude at 2 months | Baby

Little Jude is back! We thought the day would be freezing, but the weather was perfect. Just at the peak of springtime too. This family is just so great to work with. Hope you enjoy the photos! You're little guy is so much fun!

There are so many things I love about this photo.

Cheers!

[Photos by Monika. Jonathan took the last one - so cute!]

 

I sure do love my sweet husband. 

He's super fantastic and we've been having quite the adventures the last month or so. 

Oh how I enjoy sunny spring days. 

We've picked up mountain biking and go just about every weekend with friends. We've also picked up gardening (again) now that it's not 40 degrees anymore. We went to inspect our raised beds this afternoon and hey — our broccoli has sprouted! We've also been camping, making delicious meals and running around outside taking pictures.

Life is good and I'm so very thankful. I'm thankful for life, a relationship with my Heavenly Father, sunshine, family, hugs, friendships, smiles, fresh air, sweet texts, flowers and so much more.

These images above were taken looking through a viewfinder of an old vintage camera of my father's. In all my outdoors adventures I'm often reminded of my sweet old dad. He's greatly missed, but I'm thankful for all the memories we shared together. As time passes I realize how very much I am like him. And that makes me smile.

loving this

I'm loving this skirt today.

We've gone from Winter to Summer here in Tennessee. It's in the mid 80's (about to set record temps!) and it's only the beginning of April.  I wonder what this means for the real summer? Yikes! Well, in the mean time I guess it's time to pull out those dresses, skirts, and shorts.

Happy Monday all!

[image via D4Discus Etsy]