Finally, more pictures

Well, a little bit later than promised, but here are the last bit of pictures from our 2009 garden (finally).

Our First Garden

Well, it looks like I'm actually sticking to my New Years resolution! When Nik and I found our apartment (an old home that's been converted to a 2-family home), we noticed there was a boxed-out garden area in the backyard. We asked the landlord if he minded if we planted a garden, and he said no. Little did we know when we first decided to plant a garden that we would go a little garden-happy.

We decided to plant a garden for many reasons, including: we really like vegetables, we really like cooking with fresh ingredients, we try to be as eco-friendly as we can, and we like to be outside. So began our first garden adventure. Considering that I'm very much a planner, as is Nik, our first garden was very poorly planned. We ended up with a combination of already started plants and seeds since it was a little late for us to plant everything from seed. After buying plants, seeds, and dirt for the already boxed-out garden area and planting said plants and seeds, we decided we wanted to plant more. After planting more, we decided to plant even more, our garden eventually making it way down the fence line to the back of the house.

We ended up planting brussel sprouts (in front of the bean seeds - not a good idea), bell peppers, tomatoes (in 3 different spots and too close together), cantaloupe, okra, poblano peppers, and cucumber. Despite the poor planning, we did receive a decent bounty:

An okra flower about to blossom before producing an okra.

We had about 5-6 cantaloupe that got to this size, but all of them died before maturing because of too much rain (at least, that's what I think).


(brussel sprouts)

As mentioned in an earlier post, we decided to clear out the area between the garden spots we already had and built another boxed out garden area. This one is closer to the house, so it gets more sun than the pre-existing boxed-out area. We planted everything from seed, which included: butternut squash, rainbow chard, collard greens, beets, and kohlrabi. We found out later, when the butternut squash plants died with baby squashes on them, that we planted the squash plants need to be planted earlier. Everything else did well though. Some pictures of the garden, from the first day, are below.

We look forward to next year and our even larger, better planned out garden!

My First Blog Entry - All About Me (sort of)

Since Nik and I have moved to Cincinnati, we've planted a garden, gone on trips, have continued to cook a lot, and I, of course, have continued to bake. When we planted the garden, I thought that we should track the progress and what we learned along the way since it was our first garden and, let's face it, we're going to make mistakes. But, the tracking didn't happen. And we went on to build another garden box and planted a fall garden. Our fall garden we planted entirely from seeds and I have taken a few pictures to track the growing progression. I'll include pictures talk more about that in another posting.

Today's entry, my first (!) is about my new (to me) car. I gave away my beloved 1997 Geo Prizm to my Uncle before moving to Cincinnati. At that point, I didn't have a job but knew I wanted to buy a new car once I found a job. Fortunately, I found my job very quickly, but it ended up being in Northern Kentucky, a 20 mile, one-way trip. Needless to say, Nik wasn't too fond of me putting 200 miles a week on his car. Nik did buy a new scooter shortly after we moved here, but we both knew it would be too cold for him to ride it in the winter. So, I began saving and researching cars. I decided I wanted a Prius (big surprise), and continued to do my research to find a good deal. I finally found one in August, and making that decision to commit to that car was probably the most stressful, scary decision I've made in my life. But, I'm very happy with my choice and now you can follow my car's life on Fuelly.com!